Integrate data points from an OPC UA Server
The NETx Servers provide a standardized OPC UA (Unified Architecture) interface. OPC UA is one of the most important communication protocols for Industry and the IoT.
Using the OPC UA client explorer
After having installed the OPC UA extension, the foreign OPC servers and the nodes that shall be integrated must be configured. To make this task more easier, an OPC UA client explorer is available. This explorer can be started from the menu
After having started the explorer, the current workspace and the configured OPC UA servers and data points are shown in the start page.
On the next page, the available servers are shown. New ones can be created by pressing the Add button.
Give the OPC UA server a name (it will be used within the NETx Server to identify it) and provide the Server URI. In addition, specify the security settings. Afterwards, press the Test connection button. This will establish a test connection to verify the settings. If the connection test was successful, press Ok to save the new server.
Then select the server for which you would like to add data points and press next.
On the next page, the data points (i.e. the OPC Nodes) of the selected server can be browsed and added to your configuration. Press the Connect button to establish the connection to server. After having connected to the server, the first level of OPC UA nodes are browsed and shown:
To browse through the address spaces, click on the desired node. If not browsed yet, the click will initiate a browse request to show show the direct children of the node. Using this way, you can browse through the whole address space:
To select nodes for adding them to your configuration, just click on the corresponding check boxes and press the Add button:
After confirmation, the added data point can be seen in the current configuration:
You can also browse and select all children of a node recursively. This is done by selecting the check box of an intermediate node. In that case, all children will be browsed and selected – recursively.
Be ware of using this recursive scan for large address spaces. If a node has thousands of children, the browsing process can take very long – several minutes or even more.
You can also filter the address space to show only a limited subset of OPC UA nodes:
After having added all required data points, press the Next button. In the following page, the current configuration is shown.
There are two tabs – one for the current server configuration and one for the data points. Within these two tables, you can fine-tune your configuration. Some columns are editable and can be changing directly.
After having reviewed your configuration, press Save and Close. This will save the settings to your current workspace.
Restarting the server
After having finished the configuration using the OPC UA client explorer, the server must be restarted to take over the new settings.
The added data points should appear in the Item Tree under the specified path:
Fine tuning
To get data from OPC UA servers, the client has many different configuration options. These options are used to establish the connection as well as for the data retrieval (OPC UA subscription service). The options can be changed within the OPC UA Client Configuration.
For troubleshooting, the log level of the OPC UA driver can be increased. The corresponding log entries are stored in a separate log file (<WorkspaceDirectory>\LogFiles\xio.OpcUa.log). More information about the configuration can be found in the OPC UA driver configuration.
In addition, you can also change the server and data point definition in the Core Studio directly. The server definitions can be found in the menu entry Modules > OPC UA > Server definitions. Within this definition file, remote OPC UA servers can be configuraed. In the following example another NETx Server Platform that is running as an OPC server is defined.
A detailed description of the available server configuration options can be found here.
The OPC UA data point definition can be found in the menu item Modules > OPC UA > Data point definitions. In the following example, a data point from another NETx Server that is running as an OPC server is defined.
A detailed description of the available data point configuration options can be found here.
Article applies to the following products
NETx BMS Platform
NETx Multi Protocol Server