OPC UA INFORMATION MODEL DEPLOYMENT

The industrial IT application domain is an integrated set of ICT systems. System integration means the necessity of the information exchange between them (the nodes of a common domain). The main challenge of deploying an industrial IT solution is that information is abstract, but unfortunately, machines cannot be used to process abstraction. It is also impossible to transfer abstraction from one place to another.

The main aim of this paper is to present a new emerging engineering discipline as a synergy between systematic design methodology and available tools. Bothering about information processing is usually recognized as research and development activity. Engaging R&D activity to provide information processing centric solutions has many drawbacks. It requires distinct skills and, in consequence, solving a problem and deploying the solution must be carried out as two independent phases. It is not efficient and, therefore, very expensive and risky. The OPC Unified Architecture standard addresses this problem, namely, it proposes an architecture, services and information modeling consistent concepts with the goal to allow vendors to release out-of-the-box products ready to be used by engineers. The above-mentioned issues could be overcome by reusability and unification.

The main challenge of adopting the OPC UA standard is to converge the methodology and tools development to eliminate research and programming needs.

This whitepaper is dedicated to architects and software developers to help them deploy the real-time process state and behavior description as a ready to use solution in a real production environment and use this description to integrate the process as a consistent part of a selected Industrial IT application domain. The high-level general discussion refers to the Analyzer Device Integration (ADI) model and is illustrated using CAS Address Space Model Designer tool. It makes the paper a case study that should be useful also for the deployment of any OPC UA product.