OPC Unified Architecture is an interoperability standard developed by the OPC Foundation. It is the successor to OLE for process control (OPC). Although developed by the same organization, OPC UA differs significantly from its predecessor, i.e. the older DCOM-based version is not supported. Using this protocol has two main advantages:
- Security – configures a secure message interchange based on contemporary cryptography
- Scalability – OPC server can communicate with a different vendor’s infrastructure
You should keep in mind that when using OPC you are not communicating with PLCs directly. The OPC server stands in the middle, and all communication is dependent on the OPC server configuration.
mySCADA implementation of the OPC UA standard supports only the binary protocol – opc.tcp://Server. We do not support the web version – http://Server.