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IDProjectCategoryView StatusLast Update
0005148Feature RequestsFeature Requestpublic2022-11-22 17:56
ReporterDavid Levine Assigned To 
PriorityhighSeveritymajorReproducibilityhave not tried
Status acknowledgedResolutionopen 
Summary0005148: Add service set to AliasNames for CRUD operations
Description

Alias Names are a major improvement to OPC UA. IMO once it is adopted it will become very important to many users. Widespread adoption will make apparent the need for standard interfaces for creating, reading, updating and deleting aliases. Without this there will be as many tools for CRUD as there are vendors that support aliases. This will lead to confusion and frustration.

Adding a standard interface will make it possible to access all servers that support aliases and will make configuration, reconfiguration, etc much simpler, easier and provide a good user experience. This will further drive adoption of OPC UA.

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Paul Hunkar

2019-10-16 05:15

developer   ~0011073

Some additional note from specification:
There is no discussion of how the aliases are assigned in the server. This should be discussed.

Recommendation: add APIs for
CreateAlias
ReadAlias (this is just a normal browse / read operation - so probably does not need a method)
UpdateAlias
DeleteAlias

A general purpose server requires configuration by the system integrator. This individual will assign aliases to control programs, HMI tags, alarms, etc.
There may be servers that do not use pre-assigned Aliases, perhaps because different companion specs use different aliases for the same or overlapping data.

In a large system that can be many UA servers, each from a different vendor. Without an API for CRUD operations in the UA server, each server will require a custom tool to assign aliases - this will create a burden on the integration engineer This
person will have to align the aliases on multiple servers using multiple custom tools. This will create a barrier that few will want to try to overcome.

Another alternative - which might be used mroe often is to define all (or most) AliasNames in An AliasName Server (using any custom tool) and just assign the references to the target nodes (in what ever server they are assigned to)

David Levine

2019-12-18 10:36

developer   ~0011355

The Alias service set can be defined globally (as a service set) and per-category (as methods).

System responses for name conflicts and resolution must be defined - e.g. if a category method Create("foo") is called and that Alias is already defined under a different category what is the system response? Can the same Alias appear under multiple categories?

Jim Luth

2022-11-22 17:56

administrator   ~0018185

Assign to Paul soon.

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
2019-10-15 15:20 David Levine New Issue
2019-10-15 16:04 Jim Luth Project 10000-007: Profiles => Feature Requests
2019-10-15 16:04 Jim Luth Category Spec => Api Change
2019-10-15 16:05 Jim Luth Category Api Change => Feature Request
2019-10-15 16:05 Jim Luth Summary Add service set to Alias for CRUD operations => Add service set to AliasNames for CRUD operations
2019-10-16 05:15 Paul Hunkar Note Added: 0011073
2019-10-22 15:45 Jim Luth Assigned To => Jim Luth
2019-10-22 15:45 Jim Luth Status new => acknowledged
2019-12-18 10:36 David Levine Note Added: 0011355
2020-05-27 16:14 Jim Luth Assigned To Jim Luth =>
2022-11-22 17:56 Jim Luth Note Added: 0018185