Technology

The OPC Foundation is pleased to announce that it has joined The Open Group and plans to actively participate in the Open Process Automation Forum initiative.

If you’re one of those automation engineers who’ve been ignoring OPC UA and the whole IoT and Cloud business, it’s time to get serious about it. Yes, it hasn’t been our bread and butter in the past but the times, they are a-changing.

The era of digital transformation is taking shape with FDT’s native integration of OPC UA providing information modeling and ongoing advancements through FITS™ for Sensor-to-Cloud and Enterprise-wide Connectivity

The OPC Foundation has announced an open-source implementation of the OPC UA technology, available on GitHub to truly enable the OPC community’s successful adoption of OPC UA across all markets and all platforms.

As information workflows cross competence domains in several directions, users and providers start looking for a way to coalesce those standards into a farther-reaching, whole-encompassing interoperability “grammar”.
That is one of the main reasons why OPC UA was created.

Any client that needs to work with an OPC UA Server has to understand the information model present in the server and discover the instance of the model to be able to wire up to the correct nodes to exchange data. The usage of NodesetFiles [sic] greatly simplifies the exchange of OPC UA information models and the configuration of clients and servers. Users can be assured that their configuration is correct and it can minimize testing of systems.

Information Modeling is a useful way to plan for the collaboration involved in the design, implementation, and operation of systems. It can be utilized in various applications from large-scale manufacturing operations to building automation and energy management. The models are typically created and edited via 3D design and drafting tools. Information Modeling also provides for quick and easy project collaboration and interaction.

As more and more companies are making the switch to OPC UA, it is becoming increasingly important to be able to view OPC UA communications. One of the easiest ways we’ve found here at Software Toolbox to analyze the communication between an OPC UA client and server is to use Wireshark. What follows is a tutorial.

The OPEN-SCS Working Group (OPEN-SCS) is partnered with the OPC Foundation to develop an open source standard in the Packaging Serialization Global Name Registry and an associated set of subscription-based work products.
With the companion specification for Auto ID devices, the OPC Foundation has shown how important it is to use a standardized technology for secure communication in an industrial environment.
A release candidate for the OPC UA — IEC 61850 companion specification document is planned for Q2 2017, as work continues harmonizing these two widespread industrial standards.