lmxopcua/docs/drivers/OpcUaClient.md

OPC UA Client driver

Tier-A in-process driver that opens a Session against a remote OPC UA server and re-exposes its address space through the local OtOpcUa server. The "gateway / aggregation" direction — opposite to the usual "server exposes PLC data" flow.

For the test fixture (opc-plc) see OpcUaClient-Test-Fixture.md. For the configuration surface see OpcUaClientDriverOptions in src/ZB.MOM.WW.OtOpcUa.Driver.OpcUaClient/OpcUaClientDriverOptions.cs.

Auto re-import on ModelChangeEvent

The driver subscribes to BaseModelChangeEventType (and its subtype GeneralModelChangeEventType) on the upstream Server node (i=2253) at the end of InitializeAsync. When the upstream server advertises a topology change, the driver coalesces events over a debounce window and runs a single re-import (equivalent to calling ReinitializeAsync — internally ShutdownAsync + InitializeAsync).

Configuration

Option	Default	Notes
WatchModelChanges	true	Disable to skip the watch entirely (no extra subscription, no re-import on topology change).
ModelChangeDebounce	5s	Coalescing window. The first event starts the timer; further events extend it; when it elapses with no new events, the driver fires one re-import.

Behaviour

• One model-change subscription per driver instance, separate from the data + alarm subscriptions. Created best-effort: a server that doesn't advertise the event types or rejects the EventFilter falls through to no-watch — InitializeAsync still succeeds.
• The EventFilter selects only the EventType field (a WhereClause constrains by OfType BaseModelChangeEventType). Payload fields like Changes[] are intentionally ignored: the driver always re-imports the full upstream root, so per-event delta tracking would just add wire overhead.
• Debounce is implemented via a single-shot Timer; every event calls Timer.Change(window, Infinite) so a burst of N events triggers exactly one re-import after the window elapses with no further events.
• The re-import path acquires the same _gate semaphore that ReadAsync / WriteAsync / BrowseAsync / SubscribeAsync use. Downstream callers see a brief browse-gap (≈ the upstream DiscoverAsync duration) while the gate is held — but no torn reads or split-batch writes.
• Failure during the re-import is best-effort: the next ModelChangeEvent triggers another attempt, and the keep-alive watchdog covers permanent upstream loss. Operators see failures through DriverHealth.LastError
  • the diagnostics counters.

When to disable

Flip WatchModelChanges to false when:

• The upstream topology is known-static (e.g. firmware-pinned PLC) and the driver should never run a re-import unprompted.
• The brief browse-gap during re-import is unacceptable and a manual ReinitializeAsync call from the operator is preferred.
• The upstream server fires spurious ModelChangeEvents that don't reflect real topology changes, causing wasted re-imports. Tighten or disable rather than chasing the noise downstream.

Reverse Connect (server-initiated)

OPC UA's reverse-connect mode flips the transport direction: instead of the client dialling the server, the server dials the client's listener. The upstream sends a ReverseHello and the client continues the OPC UA handshake on the inbound socket. Required for OT-DMZ deployments where the plant firewall only permits outbound traffic from the upstream — the gateway opens a listener, the upstream reaches out.

Configuration

Option	Default	Notes
ReverseConnect.Enabled	false	Opt-in. When true, replaces the failover dial-sweep with a WaitForConnection call.
ReverseConnect.ListenerUrl	null	Local listener URL the SDK binds. Typically opc.tcp://0.0.0.0:4844 (any interface) or a specific NIC for multi-homed gateways. Required when Enabled is true.
ReverseConnect.ExpectedServerUri	null	Upstream's ApplicationUri to filter inbound dials. null accepts the first connection (only safe with one upstream targeting the listener).

Shared listener (singleton)

A single underlying Opc.Ua.Client.ReverseConnectManager per process keyed on ListenerUrl. Two driver instances that share a listener URL multiplex onto one TCP socket; the SDK demuxes inbound dials by the upstream's reported ServerUri. The wrapper (ReverseConnectListener) is reference-counted — first Acquire binds the port, last Release tears it down. Letting drivers come and go independently without races on port-bind / port-unbind.

When two drivers share a listener:

• They MUST set ExpectedServerUri to disambiguate; otherwise the first upstream to dial in wins regardless of which driver is waiting.
• They CAN come and go independently; the listener stays alive while at least one driver references it.

Behaviour

• The dial path is bypassed entirely when Enabled is true. Failover across multiple EndpointUrls doesn't apply — there's no client-side dial to fail over.
• ExpectedServerUri is the SDK's filter parameter to WaitForConnectionAsync. Inbound ReverseHellos from a different upstream are ignored and the caller keeps waiting.
• The same EndpointDescription derivation runs as the dial path — the first EndpointUrl in the candidate list seeds SecurityPolicy / SecurityMode / EndpointUrl for the session-create call. The actual endpoint lives on the upstream and the SDK reconciles after the ReverseHello.
• Cancellation: Timeout bounds the wait. A stuck listener with no inbound dial throws after Timeout rather than hanging init forever.
• Shutdown releases the listener reference. The last release stops the listener so the port can be re-bound by a future driver lifecycle.

Wiring it up on the upstream

The upstream OPC UA server has to be configured to dial out. The opc-plc simulator does this with --rc=opc.tcp://<gateway-host>:4844; for a real upstream see your server's reverse-connect docs (most major implementations expose a "ReverseConnect.Endpoint" config knob).

When NOT to use

• Standard plant networks where the gateway can dial the upstream — the conventional dial path is simpler and supports failover natively.
• Public-internet OPC UA: reverse-connect is a network-policy workaround, not a security primitive. Always pair with Sign or SignAndEncrypt
  • a vetted user-token policy.

HistoryRead Events

The driver passes through OPC UA HistoryReadEvents to the upstream server. HistoryRead Raw / Processed / AtTime ship in the same code path (ExecuteHistoryReadAsync); event history takes a slightly different shape because the client sends an EventFilter (SelectClauses + WhereClause) rather than a plain numeric / time-based detail block.

Wire path

IHistoryProvider.ReadEventsAsync(fullReference, EventHistoryRequest, ct) translates to:

new ReadEventDetails {
    StartTime,
    EndTime,
    NumValuesPerNode,
    Filter = EventFilter { SelectClauses, WhereClause }
}

…and is sent through Session.HistoryReadAsync to the upstream server. The returned HistoryEvent.Events collection (one HistoryEventFieldList per historical event) is unwrapped into HistoricalEventBatch.Events, where each HistoricalEventRow.Fields dictionary is keyed by the SimpleAttributeSpec.FieldName the caller supplied. The server-side history dispatcher uses those keys to align fields with the wire-side SelectClause order — drivers don't have to honour the entire OPC UA EventFilter shape verbatim.

SelectClauses

When EventHistoryRequest.SelectClauses is null the driver falls back to a default set that matches BuildHistoryEvent on the server side:

Field	Browse path	Notes
EventId	EventId	BaseEventType — stable unique id.
SourceName	SourceName	Source-object name.
Time	Time	Process-side event timestamp. Used for OccurrenceTime.
Message	Message	LocalizedText payload.
Severity	Severity	OPC UA 1-1000 scale.
ReceiveTime	ReceiveTime	Server-side ingest timestamp.

Custom SelectClauses are supported — pass any IReadOnlyList<SimpleAttributeSpec>. Each entry's TypeDefinitionId defaults to BaseEventType when null; pass an explicit NodeId text (e.g. "i=2782" for ConditionType) to reach typed-condition fields.

WhereClause

ContentFilterSpec.EncodedOperands carries the binary-encoded ContentFilter from the wire. The driver decodes it into the SDK ContentFilter and attaches it to the outgoing EventFilter verbatim — the OPC UA Client driver is a passthrough for filter semantics, it does not evaluate them. A malformed filter is dropped silently; the SelectClause projection still goes out.

Continuation points

Returned in HistoricalEventBatch.ContinuationPoint. The server-side HistoryRead facade is responsible for round-tripping these so a paged event read against a chatty upstream completes incrementally. The driver itself doesn't track them — every ReadEventsAsync call issues a fresh HistoryReadAsync.

HistoryRead Aggregates (Part 13 catalog)

IHistoryProvider.ReadProcessedAsync takes a HistoryAggregateType and the driver maps it to the standard Opc.Ua.ObjectIds.AggregateFunction_* NodeId in MapAggregateToNodeId. PR-13 (issue #285) extended the enum from the original 5 values (Average / Minimum / Maximum / Total / Count) to the full OPC UA Part 13 §5 catalog — ~30 aggregates.

The mapping is best-effort: not every upstream OPC UA server implements every aggregate. Aggregates the upstream rejects come back with StatusCode=BadAggregateNotSupported on the per-row HistoryRead result; the driver passes that through verbatim (cascading-quality rule, Part 11 §8) — it does not throw. Servers advertise the aggregates they support via the AggregateConfiguration object on the Server node; clients can probe it at runtime.

Catalog

Enum value	SDK NodeId field	Part 13 §	Server-side support	Typical use
Average	AggregateFunction_Average	§5.4	almost always	smoothing
Minimum	AggregateFunction_Minimum	§5.5	almost always	low watermark
Maximum	AggregateFunction_Maximum	§5.6	almost always	high watermark
Total	AggregateFunction_Total	§5.10	usually	totalisation
Count	AggregateFunction_Count	§5.18	almost always	sample count
TimeAverage	AggregateFunction_TimeAverage	§5.4.2	usually	time-weighted mean
TimeAverage2	AggregateFunction_TimeAverage2	§5.4.3	sometimes	bounded time-weighted mean
Interpolative	AggregateFunction_Interpolative	§5.3	usually	trend snapshot
MinimumActualTime	AggregateFunction_MinimumActualTime	§5.5.4	sometimes	when low occurred
MaximumActualTime	AggregateFunction_MaximumActualTime	§5.6.4	sometimes	when high occurred
Range	AggregateFunction_Range	§5.7	usually	spread
Range2	AggregateFunction_Range2	§5.7	sometimes	bounded spread
AnnotationCount	AggregateFunction_AnnotationCount	§5.21	rarely	operator notes
DurationGood	AggregateFunction_DurationGood	§5.16	sometimes	quality coverage
DurationBad	AggregateFunction_DurationBad	§5.16	sometimes	gap accounting
PercentGood	AggregateFunction_PercentGood	§5.17	sometimes	quality %
PercentBad	AggregateFunction_PercentBad	§5.17	sometimes	gap %
WorstQuality	AggregateFunction_WorstQuality	§5.20	sometimes	worst seen
WorstQuality2	AggregateFunction_WorstQuality2	§5.20	rarely	bounded worst
StandardDeviationSample	AggregateFunction_StandardDeviationSample	§5.13	sometimes	n-1 stddev
StandardDeviationPopulation	AggregateFunction_StandardDeviationPopulation	§5.13	sometimes	n stddev
VarianceSample	AggregateFunction_VarianceSample	§5.13	sometimes	n-1 variance
VariancePopulation	AggregateFunction_VariancePopulation	§5.13	sometimes	n variance
NumberOfTransitions	AggregateFunction_NumberOfTransitions	§5.12	sometimes	event count
DurationInStateZero	AggregateFunction_DurationInStateZero	§5.19	sometimes	OFF time
DurationInStateNonZero	AggregateFunction_DurationInStateNonZero	§5.19	sometimes	ON time
Start	AggregateFunction_Start	§5.8	usually	first sample
End	AggregateFunction_End	§5.9	usually	last sample
Delta	AggregateFunction_Delta	§5.11	usually	end-start
StartBound	AggregateFunction_StartBound	§5.8	sometimes	extrapolated start
EndBound	AggregateFunction_EndBound	§5.9	sometimes	extrapolated end

"Server-side support" is heuristic — see your upstream's AggregateConfiguration node for the authoritative list. AVEVA Historian, KEPServerEX, Prosys, and opc-plc each implement different subsets.

Driver-side validation

The mapping itself is unit-tested over the full enum (OpcUaClientAggregateMappingTests) — every value resolves to a non-null namespace-0 NodeId, and the original 5 ordinals stay pinned. Wire-side behaviour against a live server is exercised by OpcUaClientAggregateSweepTests (build-only scaffold pending an opc-plc history-sim profile).