A consumer of data can always detect data loss (e.g., caused by loss of network communication or a faulty producer), but in many industrial control applications, it is of interest to the application producing the data whether the consumer(s) of that data are still available. OPC UA FX provides a configurable clean-up of logical connections and all associated resources.

The lifetime of a logical connection on an AutomationComponent may be tied to its Status (see 6.6.2), which is, in turn, tied to the reception of data or heartbeat messages. A configurable CleanupTimeout (see 6.6.2) allows the deletion of all resources allocated to a specific ConnectionEndpoint once its status indicates loss of data reception.

This revision of the specification supports logical connections that utilize the PubSub communication model and hence builds on the usage of either DataSetMessages or heartbeat messages (see OPC 10000-14).