This document specifies value and structure of Profiles in the OPC Unified Architecture.

The actual Profiles are maintained in an online database and accessible via https://profiles.opcfoundation.org/.

OPC UA Profiles are used to segregate features with regard to testing of OPC UA products and the nature of the testing (tool based or lab based). This includes the testing performed by the OPC Foundation provided OPC UA CTT (a self-test tool) and by the OPC Foundation provided independent certification test labs. This could equally as well refer to test tools provided by another organization or a test lab provided by another organization. What is important is the concept of automated tool based testing versus lab based testing. The scope of this standard includes defining functionality that can only be tested in a lab and defining the grouping of functionality that is to be used when testing OPC UA products either in a lab or using automated tools. The definition of actual TestCases is not within the scope of this document, but the general categories of TestCases are within the scope of this document.

Most OPC UA applications will conform to several, but not all of the Profiles.