There are a lot of people talking about OPC these days.  There’s a good article in this weeks Automation.com newsletter from Jim Pinto on OPC and end user involvement.  He refers to an article on standards he wrote a while ago, and how it relates to OPC.  I’ve posted on that in the past, but Jim has a different take on things.  Jim’s not the only one talking.  OPC been the topic of conversation elsewhere like the ProSoft blog, and Control Global magazine.  Must be all the buzz the OPC User Groups and OPC UA DevCon generated. 

Sounds like the DevCon went over well (I know the User Groups did, my travel woes aside).  Now that the OPC UA specification Parts are being released, this year’s DevCon had more concrete presentations.

Day One focused on the high level introduction and vision of UA.  Tom’s presentation reinforced the OPC UA vision of being the next generation in system interoperability.  The How for Moving the What.  He also talked about the different collaboration efforts that are underway, such as those with EDDL and the FDT groups.  Jim wrapped up the day with some real world problems that OPC UA is targeting to solve.  Speaking of real world views, there was also an end user presentation from EDF Group, the French power company.  They talked about their requirements, challenges and experiences with OPC.  MatrikonOPC has done a lot of work with EDF, including projects that make use of OPC Tunneller and Hub and Spoke type architectures.

Day Two got into more technical aspects of OPC UA.  Again these presentations were more detailed from last year, including a great overview on the powerful information model that OPC UA exposes.  This, along with the Security and reliability aspects of OPC UA open the door for some powerful applications in the near future.   The highlight of the conference would have to be the demonstration.   This year they chose to show some of the lower end flexibility of OPC UA, by demonstrating OPC UA connectivity on embedded and Linux platforms.

Day Three dove deep into the gory details of Implementation.  This was for the Devs, of the DevCon.  There was a presentation on some of the Microsoft development offerings, and a good outline of the various OPC UA SDKs that will be available  (ANSI C, .NET and Java).

All the feedback I’ve gotten in my conversations on the DevCon have been positive.   Anyone out there have any other comments to add, Good, Bad or Ugly?   For me, the big thing I keep seeing is the importance of end user involvement in the process.  At the OPC UG in Houston, Jim Pinto issued a challenge to the OPC Foundation of 75% end user enrollment in the OPC Foundation.   Personally I agree with Jim.  Those that face the pain are in the best position to drive the solution.  Looks like Tom is taking the challenge to heart with a renewed focus on membership.  The more the merrier!