Introduce a PI OPC UA Server

This enhancement definitely should be revised and reopened now. OPC DA is almost gone from the market...

It's a must for as, in addition, it is also a must for the product longevity if you want to have the same features other historians provides nowadays.

Definitely a must have in industrial environments going forward. OPC UA is the technology to integrate IT with OT bidirectionally. Businesses and integrators are increasingly requesting to have PI data in their applications with preference to pull data from PI using OPC UA.

Without OPC UA Server as a product in the AVEVA PI Suite, other third party products needs to be considered to enable IT/OT integration, what is adding more complexity, costs an unnecessary IT footprint.

But maybe more importantly for AVEVA, it paves the way for other integration products in the landscape and the first step to stop using PI.

Agree that this is definitely a must have. Everything OPC is moving towards OPC UA as its better security and easier to use. Really surprised to see that this request was Declined as seems like a no brainer to add to the offerings for PI.

Many customers are now asking for the historian to support OPC UA. This is covered on the interface side now but not the server.

Hello, YES we need it, in fact even our IT security department is asking for it as already. We have real-time systems that already have the same protocol. It is more secure It saves a lot of issues and complications with DCOM It is becoming a standard in the industry due to the improvements over the old DA/HDA. We do distribute data from PI to other internal projects via OPC, and current OPC server is not quite up for the task in terms of security We could have used it a year a go, we will require it soon if not we will be forced to look for other solutions.

Dear Ray, Maybe you are not aware but there are already RTU's and PLC's having OPC UA for more than a year/two. SCADA systems like the ones from Siemens i think even Rockwell now supports OPC UA how long now... others too! It is an very important subject to us and our industry and we would like to know if this is planned and when. Buy not having the capability to send OPC UA , it creates and impact on the complete chain of applications and that is not small! I think just the security impact should be enough from your end to develop the same.

Yes a PI OPC UA server is needed to support cloud based apps or other OPC UA enabled applications.

Fully agree, the PI System should have the possibility to work as an OPC UA server.

We need to expose PI as OPC UA server for one of the large scale implementation project. Does OSISoft has any roadmap?

In response to Balamurugan Veldurai, "We need to expose PI as OPC UA server fo..." Balamurugan they don't have a road map yet.  If you need to implement soon you need to look into using an OPC UA Wrapper.

I believe this request would be encompassed by this one. https://feedback.osisoft.com/forums/555145-pi-developer-technologies/suggestions/18844639-introduce-a-pi-opc-ua-server

In response to Vincent Kaufmann, "I believe this request would be encompas..." No. having a PI OPC UA server is its own thing... and it only applies PI Points access from PI Servers   Having an AF OPC server (whatever the type) exposing AF Attributes is fundamentally different, and way more important in my opinion.   Let's take an exemple: I have a Speed PI Point which I need to look summaries over 10mins (Min, Max, Avg, StdDev)... If I want to display these information into an external system through PI OPC DA, I need to build an Analysis that records every summary in individual PI Points. Therefore overloading Analysis with useless calculation, multiplicating PI Points and Data (ok this could be severely compressed) where all of this could be avoided.   With an AF OPC Server, the same PI Point could be the source of multiple AF Attributes configured to show the desired summary, each attributes exposed as OPC Item.

While the name may not imply it, any implementation of of OPC UA within the PI ecosphere that did not include AF functionality wouldn't be worth the time. I Since you seem quite interested in an OPC UA solution, I would encourage you to reach out to the product manager of our Developer Technology suite for a possible interview to discuss what you would like to see in the product. Ray Verhoeff - ray@osisoft.com

We have a need to Access AF elements via an OPC UA Server. We have third party software that gets it's data via an OPC DA Server, and that tool refers directly to Tag names. Those names could possibly get modified and cause many edits in the third party application, this situation has already occurred at least once. If we could point the third party tool to use AF Elements, exposed via the OPC US Server, then the third party tool would no longer need to change if tag names changed.

In response to Ray's comment asking for OPC UA Clients. One use case I have heard from customers is to expose PI data via OPC UA to Siemens SINCAL. https://www.siemens.com/global/en/home/products/energy/services/transmission-distribution-smart-grid/consulting-and-planning/pss-software/pss-sincal.html

Hello, Any update on the subject? It is 2018!!!

We have started work on an OPC UA server for the PI System which will expose asset and time series data in the PI System through the OPC UA specification. We consider this experimental work. We will certainly release it if we are sure we can meet your requirements of features, performance, and scalability. The OPC UA spec is large so I need to know what parts are the most important. Names of OPC UA client applications would be helpful.

In response to Raymond Verhoeff, "We have started work on an OPC UA server..." Ideally, would want to use Pi as BOTH an OPC / UA client and server.   From a client perspective, the Pi OPC / UA connector could be used to either poll OPC / UA based comm mgmt. servers (like Kepware) or subscribe to published events via OPC / UA from comm managers capable of that or eventually edge based PLCs, etc. that can act as OPC / UA servers.   From a server perspective, once data is collected into PI Server, would like to be able to stream it (via OPC / UA  over MQTT or AMZP) up to an IoTHub in Azure for more advanced analytics.   It looks like this piece may be doable in the upcoming version of the Pi Integrator for Azure.

Fully agree! the PI must be able to work with the OPC UA server specifications; in order to meet the cyber security requirements as well.