Year-end Summary
OPC Certification had a busy year. The test labs have been actively certifying products, including continuing the certification of Companion Specifications such as MDIS. The OPC Foundation Field Level Communications (FLC) Initiative and O-PAS™ have announced mandatory requirements for certification, which will drive additional traffic to the test labs in the coming year.
The OPC Foundation released a new Logo to go along with the previous logo. The Foundation had been asked to provide a certification logo that is easier to print or include on a product. The prior logo was too complex for printing onto a simple device. The new logo is simple text, which can be easily printed onto a product.
The OPC Foundation released a new version of the CTT, which includes enhanced functionality for testing AML files, providing testing for OPC UA FX information models/communication, and general enhancements to many aspects of the testing. This further includes the release of new trademarks that are only applicable to products that have been certified by the OPC Foundation Certification program.
In addition, the CTT has been enhanced to provide expanded coverage for groups, such as The Open Group and their O-PAS™ standard. This standard requires OPC UA functionality, including a full complement of security features and O-PAS specific information models. It will also require AML for off-line configuration. O-PAS and FLC have been working together to ensure that these standards will complement each other.
The OPC Foundation compliance team have been active in multiple companion standards in helping them generate Conformance Units and general testing for each respective companion standard.
OPC Foundation has held three successful IOP Workshops this year, with the last being held in November, in Europe. The European IOP (held in Nuremburg, Germany) was a complete sell-out, requiring some vendors to attend virtually. Interoperability testing is an important aspect for getting products ready for certification before being released to the market. IOP events are key to ensure that products work well with the open ecosystem that OPC UA provides. Read the IOP Workshop article for more information about the upcoming events in 2025.
What you can look forward to in 2025
Since observing an increase in products that support GDS functionality, both on the Client and Server side, as well as the availability of commercial GDS solutions, the OPC Foundation has spent some time expanding automated testing related to these GDS solutions. A new release of the test tool will include automated testing for the commercial GDS offering as well as enhanced automated testing for Servers and Clients related to GDS functionality. It will further include the entire range of GDS functionality (i.e. AliasNames, certificate management, discovery, user authentication, and token services).
Additional enhancements and extensions will automate the OPC UA FX testing. This will include ConnectionManager testing, AML testing enhancements, testing for more of the optional features described in the OPC UA FX Controller profile, as well as supporting new features, such as diagnostics that are now being released in OPC UA FX.
The conformance team will continue to work with the Safety working group on the release of a Safety Compliance Test Tool that will be part of a Safety Certification program. Part 15 OPC UA Safety, describes a black channel communication methodology that can be used to transfer Safety data over OPC UA. This safety protocol requires a separate Safety rated certification and the test tool is undergoing the safety assessment by TÜV, which should be complete early next year, at which point the OPC Foundation will be selecting a Safety-qualified lab for Safety related certification.
Work with Ethernet-APL will continue to ensure that a product that supports Ethernet-APL and multiple protocols can have the Ethernet-APL portion certified by any of the standardization organizations (i.e. PI, FieldComm group, ODVA) and the results shared between the SDOs. Ethernet-APL will be an important part of OPC UA FX device integration, in that it will allow for field level devices in low-power, intrinsically-safe network environments.
Additionally, work continues with TIACC on establishing a common set of certification tests for time sensitive networking environments. The release of TIACC and the IEC/IEEE 60802 Industrial Profiles for TSN are targeted for 2025. The OPC Foundation is planning on supporting certification for OPC UA-based TSN solutions in 2025/2026, depending on releases.
If you do have questions on these topics or are interested in getting involved in our activities, please do not hesitate to contact us at compliance@opcfoundation.org
Paul & Alexander