What's Sweet About OPC UA?

Sept. 1, 2008
The OPC Foundation, in Scottsdale, Ariz., began work on Unified Architecture a few years ago in an attempt to modernize and enhance OPC, while maintaining compatibility with traditional OPC.
While it’s still officially in draft form, OPC UA is already getting adopted in the marketplace. Its individual parts have been released over the past year with the final parts getting released in just the past couple of months.Current OPC UA features include:• Complex data built-in—The existing Data Access Specification was enhanced with the release of the Complex Data Companion Specification. In UA, complex data will be the norm.• Enhanced namespace—OPC UA allows for unlimited node types and unlimited relationships. Further, each node may participate in an unlimited number of relationships with other nodes. This ensures that no system will be too complicated for exposure via UA.• Rich base set of services—The base UA specification will define the necessary generic services to browse and query the namespace, read/write data and publish/subscribe events and data changes.• UA-derived specifications—The base UA specification will be purposely generic and not imply much semantics. The bulk of the functional areas addressed by the existing OPC specifications will be derived from the UA base specification.• Scalability—Compared with the existing OPC specifications, UA will scale to much larger enterprise-wide data modeling systems, as well as to much smaller embedded devices.• Reliability and redundancy—UA will build in the necessary diagnostics and features necessary for vendors to build high reliability systems. This includes hooks for redundancy.Related Feature - What's Sweet about OPC UA?
To read the feature article relating to this story, go to http://www.automationworld.com/feature-4507

Sponsored Recommendations

Shorten project timelines with these hidden-gem Ignition efficiency tips for designing HMIs, provided by Inductive Automation Sales Engineer Reese Tyson.
Get ready for that “where has this been all my life?” moment—over 25 hidden Ignition features await in our webinar. Our experts show how to boost your productivity and streamline...
Advanced software solutions, like those built in the Ignition platform from Inductive Automation, can provide a crucial means to navigating electrical grid challenges.
Unlock seamless data flow across your manufacturing sites with MQTT and Ignition—turn siloed operations into a connected, data-driven enterprise. Discover how standardization,...