Thanks for more info.

Just to make it clear, the "Properties" window from Softing demo client (lower left corner of your picture) are *not* the OPC properties on the item. They are various pieces of info assembled together when the Softing client is reading or subscribing, and it's all available only *after* you "add" an item to the group (i.e. not really what you want to do).

If you wanted to see the true list of OPC properties on a given item using the Softing OPC demo client, you need to

1. Switch to the "DA Browse" tab (at the bottom of the window)
2. Navigate to an item and right-click on it
3. Select Properties (F7).

You may then get something like this:





Best regards

Normally, GetPropertyValue(or GetMultiplePropertyValues) with DAPropertyId.DataType should return the data type well. It looks like that it is the OPC server implementation which returns nothing in this case.

Can you verify this with some other OPC client? Or, as a last resort, we can employ the so-called OPC Analyzer to view the true communication between the client and the server.

If the server is not doing it well, and BrowseProperties is not an option either, I can hardly think of more workarounds. There is probably one, fairly sneaky, in terms of efficiency somewhere between BrowseProperties and GetPropertyValue/GetMultiplePropertyValues, and, again depending on the precise server behavior, it may or may not work: You can try calling BrowseLeaves repeatedly on each branch, passing it a filter that specifies certain data type, for all data types you are interested in. The idea is that if you have branches that have many items (leaves) in them, it is still far better to make one call (or a constant, small number of calls) to BrowseLeaves instead of BrowseProperties on every leaf.

Best regards