Overview
OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) is the next generation of the familiar OPC standard. This is a globally standardized communication protocol via which machine data can be exchanged irrespective of the manufacturer and platform. OPC UA already integrates common security standards directly in the protocol. Another major advantage of OPC UA over the conventional OPC standard is its independence from the COM/DCOM system.
 | Detailed information on OPC UA can be found on the web pages of the OPC Foundation. |
The TwinCAT 3 Function TF6100 OPC UA consists of several software components that enable data exchange with TwinCAT based on OPC UA.
The following table provides an overview of the individual product components.
Software component | Description |
|---|---|
TwinCAT OPC UA Server | Provides an OPC UA Server interface so that UA clients can access the TwinCAT runtime. |
TwinCAT OPC UA Client | Provides OPC UA Client functionality to enable communication with other OPC UA Servers based on PLCopen-standardized function blocks and an easy-to-configure I/O device. |
TwinCAT OPC UA Configurator | Graphical user interface for configuring the TwinCAT OPC UA Server. |
TwinCAT OPC UA Sample Client | Graphical sample implementation of an OPC UA Client in order to carry out a first connection test with the TwinCAT OPC UA Server. |
TwinCAT OPC UA Gateway | Wrapper technology that provides both an OPC COM DA Server interface and OPC UA Server aggregation capabilities. |
This documentation describes the TwinCAT OPC UA Server, which is an OPC UA server application that enables access to symbols from the TwinCAT real-time environment. The server can be operated either directly on the controller or on a gateway PC.
Both relationships are shown in simplified form in the following diagram and are explained in more detail in the article Installation variants.
