Milo | projects.eclipse.org

Friday, February 26, 2016 - 20:30 by Kevin Herron

Basics

This proposal is in the Project Proposal Phase (as defined in the Eclipse Development Process) and is written to declare its intent and scope. We solicit additional participation and input from the community. Please login and add your feedback in the comments section.

Project

Eclipse Milo

Parent Project

Eclipse IoT

Working Group

Internet of Things (IoT)

Proposal State

Created

Background

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) often refers to the idea of connectivity and interoperability between machinery found in the manufacturing industry. IIoT represents a significant opportunity to improve the efficiency of industrial automation processes and in other industries in general. A key challenge for IIoT is the wide and diverse nature of the devices, equipment, software and vendors that comprise the industrial ecosystem.

OPC-UA is an important standard in the industrial automation industry, ensuring interoperability between the many different types of machinery and software. OPC was initially release in 1996 but has evolved over time to become a flexibile and open standard called OPC-UA. OPC-UA has become one of the key standards behind the Industry 4.0 initiative in Europe and more specifically in Germany. It's also beginning to see traction in the United States.

Scope

This project provides all the tools necessary to implement OPC Unified Architecture (UA) client and/or server functionality in any JVM-based project.

The project provides:

a stack implementation, compatible with the latest version (1.03) of the UA specifications.
a SDK built on the stack that enables development of compliant UA client and server applications.

The separation between stack and SDK may seem arbitrary at first, but the distinction is common within the OPC-UA community and vendors as it allows SDKs that serve different needs to be built upon a common stack.

Description

OPC Unified Architecture is an interoperability standard that enables the secure and reliable exchange of industrial automation data while remaining cross-platform and vendor neutral. The specification, currently version 1.03, is developed and maintained by the OPC Foundation with the guidance of individual software developers, industry vendors, and end-users. It defines the interface between Clients and Servers, including access to real-time data, monitoring of alarms and events, historical data access, and data modeling.

Licenses

Eclipse Distribution License 1.0 (BSD)

Eclipse Public License 1.0

Legal Issues

The stack is currently licensed under Apache and the SDKs under AGPL. All of the copyright and IP is owned by me. Whatever bureaucracy exists around transferring and changing licensing will need be executed.

Why Here?

The OPC Foundation has been positioning OPC-UA as a contending protocol in the IIoT space, and seeing successful adoption, making it a natural fit for the Eclipse IoT ecosystem.

Project Scheduling

The initial contribution is ready.

I expect that a production ready "1.0" release of all projects could be ready in either Q2 or Q3 of 2016.

People

Project Leads

Kevin Herron

Committers

Kevin Herron

Mentors

Julien Vermillard

Interested Parties

Dominic Storey
Eurotech
Bosch Software Innovations GmbH

Source Code

Initial Contribution

The initial contribution includes a fully functional stack, client, and server SDK, however the server SDK is missing certain functionality and API stability that has kept it from seeing a "1.0" release.

This missing functionality would be implemented during the incubation phase.

Source Repository Type

GitHub

Source Repositories

https://github.com/digitalpetri/opc-ua-stack

https://github.com/digitalpetri/ua-client-sdk

https://github.com/digitalpetri/ua-server-sdk

Interested Party

Submitted by Kai Hudalla on Mon, 03/14/2016 - 03:04

Hi Kevin,

great to see an "open" implementation of UPC-UA coming to Eclipse :-)

Could you please add "Bosch Software Innovations GmbH" as an interested party to your project?

Regards,

Kai

Interested Party

Submitted by David Woodard on Thu, 03/17/2016 - 16:46

Kevin,

This project looks very exciting! Please add Eurotech to the list of interested parties.

Thanks,

--Dave

Prosys Comparison

Submitted by Jan Wedel on Fri, 03/18/2016 - 03:30

Hi,

also coming from Bosch SI, we are currently using the commercial Prosys SDK and I think your contribution is very valuable to the community.

I would be interested in:

What are the feature of Milo compared to the Prosys lib? Are you planning on a comparison chart?
How much effort (measured in complexity, not time) would it be to switch from Prosys to Milo in the future (Ranging from drop-in replacement to completely different architecture)?

Thanks,

Jan

Jan,

Submitted by Kevin Herron on Wed, 03/30/2016 - 12:30

Jan,

I think building a comparison chart is a good idea. I'm going to look at the Prosys SDK again, but I imagine there should be fairly good feature parity.

As far as effort for switching - it won't be drop in and the effort to swtich will depend on if you're talking about a client or server implementation. The client will be much easier to port. The server a little more work. I am not very familiar with the abtraction they've chosen to manage and expose nodes, so I don't know what effort will be involved yet.

If possible, I'd like to work with you to make sure Milo has the necessary functionality for you to make the transition (if that's something you decide to do) in its '1.0' release.

Also interested :-)

Submitted by Dominic Storey on Fri, 03/18/2016 - 06:11

Hello Kevin,

Could you add myself as an interested party too?

Thanks,

Dom

Added

Submitted by Wayne Beaton on Wed, 03/23/2016 - 12:09

I've added you all as interested parties.

Interested Party

Submitted by Thomas Haber on Fri, 06/03/2016 - 08:49

Hi Kevin,

just found you in this project.

I'd also like to be added as interested party.

I'f also like to state that we use Kevin implementation (fresh from github) in our eclipse plugin (http://toem.de/index.php/projects/impulse/articles/99-access-opc-ua-devices-with-eclipse-impulse) and are quite happy with it !

thanks,

thomas