Now the OPC Foundation has released a new generation of OPC specifications called OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA).
The OPC Foundation defines standards for online data exchange between automation systems. They address access to current data (OPC DA), alarms and events (OPC A&E) and historical data (OPC HDA). Those standards are successfully applied in industrial automation.
The new OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) unifies the existing standards and brings them to state-of-the-art technology using service-oriented architecture (SOA). Main advantages of the new standard are:
This book gives an easy to understand introduction into OPC UA and explains the concepts of the standard and other relevant topics that are not directly addressed by the standard.