This specification was created by a joint working group of the OPC Foundation and AutomationML e.V.. It defines an OPC UA Information Model to represent the AutomationML models.

OPC Foundation

The OPC Foundation defines standards for online data exchange between automation systems. They address access to current data (OPC DA), alarms and events (OPC A&E) and historical data (OPC HDA). Those standards are successfully applied in industrial automation.

The new OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) unifies the existing standards and brings them to state-of-the-art technology using service-oriented architecture (SOA). Platform-independent technology allows the deployment of OPC UA beyond current OPC applications only running on Windows-based PC systems. OPC UA can also run on embedded systems as well as Linux / UNIX based enterprise systems. The provided information can be generically modelled and therefore arbitrary information models can be provided using OPC UA.

AutomationML e.V.

The AutomationML initiative is an open, in 2006 founded industrial consortium which became a registered association in 2009. It welcomes all interested company and research institute.

Purposes of AutomationML e.V. are promotion and further development of AutomationML to standardise data exchange in the engineering process of production systems. Therefore, AutomationML e.V. develops and maintains an open, neutral, XML based, and free industry data representation standard which enables a domain and company spanning transfer of engineering data. Instead of developing a new data format for that purpose, already existing formats were used, extended, adapted, and merged in a proper way. So far, the representation of plant specific data in general and in special the plant structure, geometry and kinematics, and logic description is possible. Additional representations for networks, mechatronical systems, and others are in progress. Hence, AutomationML is the most comprehensive data format of plant engineering. It is already used in the field and is also available in several products. Within IEC 62714 all parts of AutomationML are going to be standardised internationally.