Connections to be created are part of a ConnectionManager configuration (ConnectionConfigurationSet).

An AutomationComponent and the included FunctionalEntities report the status of Connections that are part of the FunctionalEntity, and Clients can monitor this status. Some ConnectionManagers could provide the following:

• know when to create a Connection,
• respond to an application that knows when to create a Connection.
• respond to external or internal commands.
• monitor the Connections they create.

Possible reasons for monitoring Connection status include:

• An application or ConnectionManager monitors ConnectionEndpoints on AutomationComponents to decide whether it needs to (re)establish or close Connections. For example:
• On startup, it checks if the desired Connections already exist. For Connections that do not exist, it could trigger the establishment processing.
• At runtime, it would check if any Connections were cleaned up (see 5.5.4) or disappeared (e.g. restarted application). If so, it could trigger establishment processing on the Connection.
• It might determine, for application-defined reasons, that a Connection needs to be closed, and it could trigger the close Connection processing.
• Vendor-specific diagnostic applications monitor Connections defined in ConnectionConfigurationSets on a ConnectionManager and the ConnectionEndpoints on AutomationComponents to present comprehensive Connection information to the operator or engineers, including identification information, current status and last error information.

ConnectionManagers can expose capabilities that describe the functionality they provide (see 6.7.2).