Automated generation of OPC UA information models — A review and outlook

OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) is widely considered a key enabler of “Industry 4.0” and one of the most promising standardized platforms for industrial communications from sensor to cloud. One of its key features is a powerful framework for information modeling that allows to compose semantic models and enables self-describing information provisioning. However, building OPC UA information models can be a tedious task, requiring deep understanding of both the OPC UA meta-model and the application domain to be modeled. Therefore, a wide range of methods for automatically generating OPC UA information models has been described in the literature, either from relational databases, from application-domain specific models, tools, or languages, or by aggregating multiple component-level models into a single, system-level information model. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art in tools and methods for automated generation of OPC UA information models. It is argued that enriching the tool landscape and interoperability, in particular with industrial engineering tools, will be a prerequisite for unleashing the full potential of OPC UA.