Irob,
You experience is one of the problems that OPC was designed to eliminate. For the popular PLC brands, you can choose from several different OPC servers each from a different vendor. All are readily interchangeable. If one turns out to be unsuitable for one reason or another, you can...
OPCWare Client Developer (http://www.opcware.com/OPCWare.html) includes a VB.NET sample project. That ActiveX packs plenty of power, and is definitely the fastest way to get your OPC client applications developed.
You should look at OPCWare Client Developer (http://www.opcware.com), which makes logging OPC data to a database or flat file a snip. The demo includes examples of logging OPC data to an access database, logging to a csv file, and logging to a database via ODBC/DSN.
Fritzfrederix wrote: "At our plant we are using WinCC for visualisation, now for a new application I should need about 8 new licenses of WinCC which is very expensive. That why I thought off VB."
Fritzfrederix , it may be too late now but if you have a similar requirement again, it looks like...
Maybe I'm a little late coming in on this but it seems to me that if you want simplicity, you should not have to bother with writing code and using OCX PLC drivers etc., instead you should be using OPC.
First you get an OPC server for the AB PLC such as KepServer, and configure that to connect...
