Figure 10 gives an overview of the safety communication layer and its interfaces. It thereby also shows the scope of the specification of OPC UA Safety in part 15. The main function of the OPC UA Safety layer services is the state machine which handles the protocol. The state machines interact with the following interfaces:
- The Safety Application Program Interface (SAPI) is accessed by the safety application for exchanging safety data during runtime.
- The Safety Parameter Interface (SPI) is accessed during commissioning for setting safety parameters such as IDs or the timeout value in the SafetyConsumer.
- The non-safety related Diagnostics Interface (DI) can be accessed at runtime for troubleshooting the safety communication.
- the OPC UA platform interface (OPC UA PI) connects the SCL to the non-safe OPC UA stack and is used during runtime.
The interfaces (SAPI, SPI, DI and OPC UA PI) described in this clause are abstract and informative. They represent logical data inputs and outputs to this layer that are necessary for the proper operation of the state machine. No normative, concrete mappings are specified. The concrete implementations are vendor-specific and may not exactly match the abstract interfaces described.
