A RESTful extension of OPC UA

Abstract

RESTful interfaces are a wide-spread architecture style for webservice implementations and are built upon the resource-oriented approach to decentralized architectures (ROA). REST postulates a set of requirements that are not covered by the OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) communication protocol per se. We propose a set of simple extensions to the OPC UA binary protocol that enable RESTful communication. The evaluation shows an order of magnitude improvement in the use of communication resources for sporadic service requests. Additionally, RESTful OPC UA allows applications to profit from the advantages of the resource-oriented architecture style, such as caching and loose application coupling.