Test-case automation has been keeping pace with OPC UA specification releases to make it easy for vendors to build OPC UA-enabled products and ensure compliance. To that end, the OPC Foundation has built an online product catalog of products for end-users to search.
OPC UA is committed to compliance in order to realize “The Industrial Interoperability Standard”. In this article, Omron will introduce you to the services for checking compliance, the certification test items, and the topic of the certification test.
The first InterOperability Event of the year is scheduled to start March 21, 2022. It is a hybrid event with in-person attendance at Honeywell in Phoenix, AZ as well as the ability to connect remotely. Lots of work has been happening on the Conformance Test Tool (CTT) to keep up with the rapid pace of development of the OPC UA specifications.
We accomplished two major releases of the Conformance Test Tool (CTT) this year, and updated the interoperability (IOP) infrastructure to better support hybrid IOP events. In 2022 our goals are to automate more testing and add test-cases for PubSub, OPC UA FX, AliasNames, and much more.
The general range of supported functionality along with the different types of OPC products that are being certified in our Testlab have grown in scope and this increase in scope looks like it will continue. By scope we mean not only the support for multiple interface/transports, but also extensions to the base OPC UA specification, inclusion of companion specification information models, and even the use of OPC UA by other groups.
The Compliance Working Group within the OPC Foundation has been hard at work preparing the certification for supporting OPC UA over Ethernet Advanced Physical Layer (APL) and OPC UA over Time Sensitive Networking (TSN). Learn about our progress.
The OPC Foundation has been aggressively working on enhancing its certification program. A big release of the Compliance Test Tool (CTT) is planned for the end of March. This release will include Alarm & Condition (A&C) testing as a brand new feature.
The OPC Foundation Interoperability (InterOp, or IOP) Task Force has been working to establish the infrastructure needed to allow for a virtual IOP. After addressing any issues resulting from an upcoming test run, we will have an official IOP available for all vendors to register for by the new year.
Companion Specification certification is becoming more important and more common. Providing vendors with the capability to execute automated tests to verify compliance against a Companion Specification, and the opportunity to certify their products easily, increases the confidence in and demand for Companion Specifications.
The new OPC UA Compliance Test Tool (UACTT) has been extended to include more than 1800 test scripts for OPC UA core functionality and for Companion Specifications –including validation for Process Automation Device Information Model (PA-DIM), PLCopen, and MDIS. Certification testing can now also be performed remotely via a virtual connection.