OPC UA and Topkapi: state of the art

OPC is an international interoperability standard for secure, reliable data exchange, particularly in the field of industrial automation. It is an independent platform, guaranteeing a smooth flow of information between systems. The latest specifications concern the unified architecture known as OPC UA.  

Topkapi implementation and  use cases  

A little history: 

• Version 6.1: introduction of the OPC UA protocol in Topkapi as a client for real-time data acquisition; 
• Version 6.2: Topkapi data server via OPC UA protocol for both real-time and archived data. The client part is enriched by the acquisition of time-stamped data at source. 
   

OPC UA can be used with Topkapi in a variety of ways: 

• Communication front-end for third-party software: with its numerous native or standardized protocols, Topkapi can be used as an acquisition front-end to supply data to a third party. 
• Secure inter-Topkapi data exchange (real time and historical): in this case, one Topkapi server acts as a data source for another Topkapi server (one is a server and the other is an OPC UA client). 
• Data acquisition in Topkapi for non-native protocols (e.g. interfacing with an OPC UA data server) 
• Data from the supervision application can be made available to a third party for further processing: CMMS, AI, data validation, etc., with the possibility of receiving instructions (read/write data). 
• Data exchange with any system supporting the standard.