The program "WinCCAlarmServer" transmits the current state and progress of alarm states to a connected TCP/IP client. The source of the alarm data is a Message Archive table ("Meldearchiv") in a database on a Microsoft SQL server. By cyclically polling this database table the current status of the alarms registered there is determined, transformed into telegrams and forwarded to the client. Some entries in the table signal error states in the communication between the WinCC-Runtime environment and PLC or the Offline-Status of the WinCC-Runtime. These entries serve as a "marker", e.g. to implicitly terminate or generally ignore alarm states. The features for detecting such entries can be defined via the configuration file.