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OPC UA tutorials

Each tutorial gives you a goal, what you need, numbered steps with commands and their expected results, common errors and cleanup. The commands were run on macOS on Apple silicon. It helps to go through the quickstart once before you start.

Tutorials

Section titled “Tutorials”
Tutorial What you learn Packages
PKI and trust setup Create and inspect application certificates and test trust. native
C client Connect, Read and Write, Browse and Call with the C ABI. native, apps
C++ client and server Build a server with the RAII wrapper and connect a client to it. native
Qt client worker Send requests with qt_client_worker without blocking the UI thread. qt
.NET Build a server and a client with PDComm.OpcUa. dotnet
MFC worker Use MfcClientWorker in a Windows MFC application. Windows native
Subscriptions Receive data change notifications. apps
Events and alarms Receive alarms and call Acknowledge, Confirm and ConditionRefresh. apps
History Read raw history and use continuation points. apps
PubSub over UDP Publish and subscribe to UADP messages over UDP. apps
PubSub over MQTT Publish and subscribe to UADP messages through an MQTT broker. apps

You practice the features the SDK server doesn’t have (events, history and PubSub) with the headless program of the simulator package, apps.

Set up the lab

Section titled “Set up the lab”

Several tutorials share one lab folder. Set it up once.

  1. Create the lab folder and copy the package files (pdcomm-opcua-native-darwin-arm64.tar.gz and pdcomm-opcua-apps-darwin-arm64.tar.gz) into it.

    터미널 창
    mkdir opcua-lab
    cd opcua-lab

  2. Unpack both packages:

    터미널 창
    tar -xzf pdcomm-opcua-native-darwin-arm64.tar.gz
    tar -xzf pdcomm-opcua-apps-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

  3. Set the environment variables the tutorials use. Every time you open a new terminal, run these four lines again from the lab folder. The last line names your license file: the SDK examples need a license for the opcua-client and opcua-server modules (an evaluation license has both), while the simulators don’t. See Install and check a license.

    터미널 창
    export OPCUA_SDK="$PWD/pdcomm-opcua-native-darwin-arm64"
    export OPCUA_APPS="$PWD/pdcomm-opcua-apps-darwin-arm64"
    export PKI="$OPCUA_SDK/examples/opcua/pki"
    export PDCOMM_LICENSE_FILE="$HOME/pdcomm/pdcomm.license"

  4. Follow PKI and trust setup to create the certificates in $PKI.

  5. Build the SDK examples:

    터미널 창
    cd "$OPCUA_SDK"
    cmake -S examples/opcua -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
    cmake --build build --config Release

The apps package contains:

Path Contents
PDComm OPC UA Simulator.app The Qt GUI simulator
bin/pdcomm-opcua-headless The headless simulator, driven by JSON lines
bin/pdcomm-opcua-mcp The MCP server for AI tools
lib/ The simulator library and the Qt and OpenSSL runtimes
examples/opcua/scenarios/simulator-tour.json A scenario that visits every workspace

On Windows, set the variables in PowerShell, as in $env:OPCUA_SDK = "$PWD\pdcomm-opcua-native-windows-AMD64" and $env:PDCOMM_LICENSE_FILE = "$HOME\pdcomm\pdcomm.license", and unpack the ZIP packages.

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