Information group expanding interoperability and cooperation

The OPC Foundation has created open-source availability of its OPC-UA technology and are also collaborating with the Object Management Group (OMG) to create a standard that will allow OPC UA and DDS to function together. The OPC Foundation also plans to demonstrate the addition of the publish/subscribe message to the OPC-UA specification at Hannover Messe 2016.

By OPC Foundation April 14, 2016

The OPC Foundation has announced open-source availability of the OPC UA technology. The open source repository of OPC-UA is now available on the open source website GitHub. OPC-UA is an industrial communication architecture for platform independent, high performance, secure, reliable, and semantic interoperability between sensors, field devices, controllers, and applications at the shop-floor level in real-time as well as between the shop floor and the enterprise IT cloud.

By open sourcing the OPC-UA technology, the OPC Foundation is enabling access to the technology for academia and research organizations as well as many suppliers and end-users that would like to assess the OPC-UA technology for early adopter and feasibility analysis purposes. 

Groups to collaborate on interoperability

OPC Foundation and Object Management Group (OMG) announced a collaborative strategy for marketing and technical interoperability for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). The OPC Foundation and OMG have developed a technical positioning and FAQ document for usage of both the OPC-UA and the OMG Data Distribution Service (DDS) standard.

The OPC Foundation and OMG are working together on integration and have developed two ways for the technologies to work together. First, an "OPC-UA/DDS gateway" will permit independent implementations to work together. Second, "OPC-UA DDS Profile" will enable integrated use cases. Initial work to define both approaches is underway at the two standards organizations.

DDS is designed to provide location transparent, interoperable, secure, platform independent, real-time data sharing across any kind of network. DDS lets applications define and share user data with controlled "quality of service" (QoS) such as performance, scalability, reliability, durability and security. 

Demonstration

The OPC Foundation announced the addition of the publish/subscribe message pattern to the OPC-UA specification. The group plans to demonstrate using multiple vendors at Hannover Messe 2016, which starts the week of April 25. The addition of publish/subscribe communication functionality to OPC-UA provides the necessary infrastructure to achieve seamless interoperability for IIoT and Industrie 4.0 applications and devices. The inclusion of publish/subscribe is designed to provide a solid infrastructure that allows information integration from embedded devices to the cloud.

The OPC Foundation is working with 42 international suppliers that are developing products and solutions for the IIoT and needed to provide publish/subscribe to the technology portfolio to facilitate high-performance high reliable device application connectivity for this important market. Support for publish/subscribe as well as the client/server architecture provides a complete solution for any device or application. Existing applications using OPC-UA client/server communications can add the publish/subscribe features with minimal effort.

OPC Foundation

www.opcfoundation.org 

– Edited from OPC Foundation information by Chris Vavra, production editor, Control Engineering, CFE Media, cvavra@cfemedia.com. See more Control Engineering industrial networking stories.