The NodeManagement Services defined in OPC 10000-4 are designed to add or remove Nodes and References from an OPC UA Server. They might be seen as an obvious fit to change the configuration of the AddressSpace. However, there are various challenges with those Services:

• The Services take the information exactly according to the OPC UA meta model, i.e., for each added Node you provide all the Attributes of the Node. If the Server would need some additional information not exposed in the AddressSpace (like a field bus address) the Services are not suitable. Servers can of course extend the AddressSpace with for example a Property containing the field bus address, but this might not be wanted to be generally accessible.
• The Services do not provide a transactional context. There is an individual Service for adding Nodes, one for removing Nodes, one to add References and one to remove References. If the configuration change requires a transactional context (e.g. deleting some Nodes and adding various new ones including References between them), the Services are not suitable.
• The Services do not provide any information where it is allowed to add what Nodes. Often, a Server does not allow to add or remove all Nodes, but only specific Nodes at specific places of the AddressSpace. The Services are generic and do not make any restrictions. That means, the Client would need to guess where it is allowed to use them and where not, or additional information would need to be added to the AddressSpace.

Therefore, using the NodeManagement Services is in most cases not the best approach and it is recommended to use one of the other approaches described in this whitepaper.