5 Use cases
Table 13 lists possible use cases of interest for OPC UA Clients. Typically, the use case consists of utilization of OPC UA standard mechanisms and data processing at the Client site.
| Use Case | Description | Companion Specification Contribution |
| Data acquisition for “Data Mining” | Client applications gather the measurement data available for storage in an IT-based database (“Data Lake”) without predetermined purpose. Analysts further on use the data extensively with continuously refined methods and algorithms to identify the potential for economic improvements. | Providing position, velocity, and acceleration measurement value Variables as components of the DriveAxisType Object. |
| Contribute data for Industrial Internet of Things | Client applications present Axis Objects, their properties, and their “live” data in an Industrial Internet of Things ecosystem. | |
| Support standardized information model and data for digital twin | Companies offering automation solutions in special domains want to offer their own digital twin products to their customers. | |
| Support predictive maintenance | Gather sensor data accompanying the normal operation enabling analysis algorithms to detect data change patterns indicating coming failures before the failure occurs. | |
| Enhance Axis Objects with semantic information | Plant operators store semantic information providing meaningful additional data for their domain for each Axis Object. | Providing the SetApplicationTag Method as component of the DriveAxisType Object. |
| Obtain and use metadata for measurement values | Measurement metadata like engineering units allow Clients substantially improved understanding and ease of use for the data obtained. | Providing engineering unit and range information by providing 0:AnalogUnitType Variables for position, velocity, and acceleration as components of the DriveAxisType Object. |
| Support diagnosis of error conditions | Client applications process a sequence of diagnosis related events generated by the Axis Objects to present a history of incidents to plant operators. | Providing DiagnosisAlarmType Events. |
| Support logbook functions for diagnosis | Lightweight recording of history of diagnosis relevant events without usage of OPC UA historical data access. | Providing the LogbookType Object allowing access to the Axis Object’s fault buffer. |
| Obtain PROFINET Telegram Semantics | Explore the Telegram Information Model to obtain knowledge about the structure of the Telegram data. | Providing PnTelegramType, PnIoTelegramType and PnIoSignalType Objects in the PROFINET aspect of the Information Model. Providing Variables representing the Standard Signals of the configured Standard Telegram. Providing cross-aspect References. |