The ibmanager program provides a communication interface on a socket in the form of ibprotocol. This is an unencrypted connection. The interface is set up on a TCP port defined in the configuration file (element <IbProtocol>). For communication purposes, the following commands are processed:

• set
• get
• get_all
• describe
• describe_all
• credentials

With this interface, it is possible to read and set process variables of logics, remote variables shared by remote servers, and other configuration variables.

The ibmanager program initiates communication with remote variable servers that are defined in the configuration file (<RemoteServers>). It uses a TCP network connection, on which the ibprotocol is defined.

The ibmanager program can handle any number of remote variable servers. The handling of each server begins with issuing the “describe_all” command. This is intended to create variables of the appropriate types. Subsequently, “get_all” commands are sent, interspersed with “set” commands, if there has been a modification of a variable value belonging to a given server either in one of the logics or at the communication interface level.