This blog aims at the gap between really general high level introductions to OPC UA and often too academic training. It is meant for users and implementer on client and server side, to shed some light on what are really important fundamentals to understand. It will not explain what OPC UA is all about, for that find some basic introductions.
One big advantage of OPC UA is the standardization of nearly every aspect of the communication stack and a lot of common scenarios. But the standard went really far and it can be difficult to choose between all possibilities. Often, you can not see the forest for the trees. What are the essential fundamentals to be understood, to be able to work with the specifications? What is really the essential part of a specification like Alarms and Conditions? The specifications can be so extensive, it can be hard to extract the really relevant ten percent. This blog tries to help out real world implementers in the overwhelming world of OPC UA.
Since my personal experience is around machine tools, some of the information might be a bit biased in that respect. Also I’m aware that I won’t mention a lot of things. But this is intentional, to focus on the information to get you started. I’ll try to write about things, I would have wished to understand earlier. So enjoy reading.