Figure 8 illustrates the process inside a Subscriber when receiving, decoding and interpreting messages and the parameter model required for accomplishing it. As for the Publisher, the components should be considered abstract.

Figure 8 – Subscriber message reception sequence

The Subscriber need to select the required Message Oriented Middleware and establish a connection to it using the provided Address. Such a connection may simply be a multi-cast address when using OPC UA UDP or a connection to a message Broker when using MQTT or AMQP. Once subscribed, the Subscriber will start listening. The sequence starts when a NetworkMessage is received. The Subscriber may have configured filters (like a PublisherId, DataSetWriterId or a DataSetClassId) so that it can drop all messages that do not match the filter.

Once a NetworkMessage has been accepted, it is decrypted and decoded. The security parameters are the same as for the Publisher.

Each DataSetMessage of interest is passed on to a DataSetReader. Here, the DataSetMetaData is used to decode the DataSetMessage content to a DataSet. The DataSetMetaData in particular provides the complete field syntax including the name, data type, and other relevant Properties like engineering units. Version information that exists in both the DataSetMessage and the DataSetMetaData allows the Subscriber to detect version changes. If a major change occurs, the Subscriber needs to get an updated DataSetMetaData.

Any further processing is application-specific. For example, an additional dispatching step may map the received values to Nodes in the Subscribers OPC UA AddressSpace. The configuration for such a dispatching is called SubscribedDataSet. The two concrete SubscribedDataSet options with standard OPC UA configuration are TargetVariables and SubscribedDataSetMirror. The configuration of TargetVariables allows the dispatching of DataSetMessage fields to existing Variables in the Subscribers OPC UA AddressSpace. The configuration of SubscribedDataSetMirror is used if the received DataSet fields should be represented as Variables in the Subscribers OPC UA AddressSpace but the Variables do not exist and must be created as part of the Subscriber configuration.