OPC UA allows information from many different sources to be combined into a single coherent AddressSpace. Namespaces are used to make this possible by eliminating naming and id conflicts between information from different sources. Each namespace in OPC UA has a globally unique string called a NamespaceUri which identifies a naming authority and a locally unique integer called a NamespaceIndex, which is an index into the Server's table of NamespaceUris. The NamespaceIndex is unique only within the context of a Session between an OPC UA Client and an OPC UA Server- the NamespaceIndex  can change between Sessions and still identify the same item even though the NamespaceUri's location in the table has changed. The Services defined for OPC UA use the NamespaceIndex to specify the Namespace for qualified values.

There are two types of structured values in OPC UA that are qualified with NamespaceIndexes: NodeIds and QualifiedNames. NodeIds are locally unique (and sometimes globally unique) identifiers for Nodes. The same globally unique NodeId  can be used as the identifier in a node in many Servers – the node's instance data may vary but its semantic meaning is the same regardless of the Server it appears in. This means Clients can have built-in knowledge of of what the data means in these Nodes. OPC UA Information Models generally define globally unique NodeIds for the TypeDefinitions defined by the Information Model.

QualifiedNames are non-localized names qualified with a Namespace. They are used for the BrowseNames of Nodes and allow the same names to be used by different information models without conflict. TypeDefinitions are not allowed to have children with duplicate BrowseNames; however, instances do not have that restriction.