OLE for Process Control (OPC) Overview

OLE for Process Control (OPC), is the original name for an open standards specification developed in 1996 by an industrial automation industry task force. The standard specifies the communication of real-time plant data between control devices from different manufacturers.

After the initial release, the OPC Foundation was created to maintain the standard. Since then, standards have been added and names have been changed. Currently (June, 2006), "OPC is a series of standards specifications". (Seven current standards and two emerging standards.) "The first standard (originally called simply the OPC Specification"), is "now called the Data Access Specification", or (later on the same page) "OPC Data Access", or OPC Data Access Specification.

OPC is generally understood to stand for "OLE for Process Control", even though no page on the OPC Foundation website suggests that the letters "OPC" ever stood for anything, except for some content written by member companies about themselves.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLE_for_process_control