An Investigation on Database Connections in OPC UA Applications

Abstract

Abstract Open Platform Communications - Unified Architecture (OPC UA) as a communication protocol has been one of the front running IoT enablers in recent years. Many use cases in manufacturing domains demonstrate the vast inter-operability and cross-platform connectivity strengths of OPC UA. However, to consolidate its position in the IoT world, OPC UA needs to be able to bridge certain gaps, like interconnections across multiple database engines over different networks. This paper aims to investigate aggregation dynamics of OPC UA consisting of multiple database servers from a specific environment such as manufacturing. Prevailing databases over restricted networks such as production floors cannot be accessed by respective clients outside the system. In these cases, OPC UA services can provide an a selective but imperative view of data from these databases to the clients. The investigations in this paper are demonstrated with two different implementations of databases related to manufacturing with OPC UA. These applications show that using OPC UA as a means of connection and distribution of information from databases can be an effective solution to a common data view of all connections not necessarily of factory floor network.