OPC Studio User's Guide and Reference
OPC UA Global Discovery
View with Navigation Tools
Client and Subscriber Development > Development Models > Imperative Programming Model > Imperative Programming Model for OPC Data (Classic and UA) > Browsing for Information (OPC Data) > Discovering OPC UA Servers > OPC UA Global Discovery

OPC Data Client-UA allows you to query information contained in so called OPC-UA Global Discovery Server(s). A Global Discovery Server (GDS) maintains discovery information for OPC UA applications available in an administrative domain.

If you want to retrieve a list of OPC Unified Architecture servers in an administrative domain, call the DiscoverGlobalServers method, passing it the endpoint of the GDS.

In addition, you can call an overload of the DiscoverGlobalServers method that also takes a filter parameter of type UAQueryServerFilter. Using this filter, you can limit the search only to servers that meet the specified criteria. The criteria include:

You can also call the EasyUAClient.DiscoverGlobalServers method that takes no arguments, in which case the endpoint descriptor of the GDS will be taken from the GdsEndpointDescriptor property of the SharedParameters.

In all cases described above, you will receive back a UADiscoveryElementCollection object, which is collection of UADiscoveryElement-s. Each element contains a server's discovery URL. The discovery URL is the main piece of information that you can further use if you want to connect to that OPC-UA server. Each UADiscoveryElement contains information gathered about one OPC server found by the discovery process, including things like the application name, server capabilities, etc.

.NET

// This example shows how to obtain information about OPC UA servers from the Global Discovery Server (GDS).
// The result is flat, i.e. each discovery URL is returned in separate element, with possible repetition of the servers.
//
// Find all latest examples here: https://opclabs.doc-that.com/files/onlinedocs/OPCLabs-OpcStudio/Latest/examples.html .

using System;
using OpcLabs.EasyOpc.UA;
using OpcLabs.EasyOpc.UA.Discovery;
using OpcLabs.EasyOpc.UA.OperationModel;

namespace UADocExamples._EasyUAClient
{
    partial class DiscoverGlobalServers
    {
        public static void Main1()
        {
            // Instantiate the client object.
            var client = new EasyUAClient();

            // Obtain collection of application elements.
            UADiscoveryElementCollection discoveryElementCollection;
            try
            {
                discoveryElementCollection = client.DiscoverGlobalServers(
                    "opc.tcp://opcua.demo-this.com:58810/GlobalDiscoveryServer");
            }
            catch (UAException uaException)
            {
                Console.WriteLine($"*** Failure: {uaException.GetBaseException().Message}");
                return;
            }

            // Display results.
            foreach (UADiscoveryElement discoveryElement in discoveryElementCollection)
            {
                Console.WriteLine();
                Console.WriteLine($"Server name: {discoveryElement.ServerName}");
                Console.WriteLine($"Discovery URI string: {discoveryElement.DiscoveryUriString}");
                Console.WriteLine($"Server capabilities: {discoveryElement.ServerCapabilities}");
            }
        }
    }
}

COM

// This example shows how to obtain information about OPC UA servers from the Global Discovery Server (GDS).
// The result is flat, i.e. each discovery URL is returned in separate element, with possible repetition of the servers.
//
// Find all latest examples here : https://opclabs.doc-that.com/files/onlinedocs/OPCLabs-OpcStudio/Latest/examples.html .

class procedure DiscoverGlobalServers.Main;
var
  Client: OpcLabs_EasyOpcUA_TLB._EasyUAClient;
  Count: Cardinal;
  Element: OleVariant;
  DiscoveryElement: _UADiscoveryElement;
  DiscoveryElementEnumerator: IEnumVariant;
  DiscoveryElements: _UADiscoveryElementCollection;
begin
  // Instantiate the client object
  Client := CoEasyUAClient.Create;

  // Obtain collection of application elements
  try
    DiscoveryElements := Client.DiscoverGlobalServers('opc.tcp://opcua.demo-this.com:58810/GlobalDiscoveryServer');
  except
    on E: EOleException do
    begin
      WriteLn(Format('*** Failure: %s', [E.GetBaseException.Message]));
      Exit;
    end;
  end;

  // Display results
  DiscoveryElementEnumerator := DiscoveryElements.GetEnumerator;
  while (DiscoveryElementEnumerator.Next(1, Element, Count) = S_OK) do
  begin
    DiscoveryElement := IUnknown(Element) as _UADiscoveryElement;
    WriteLn;
    WriteLn('Server name: ', DiscoveryElement.ServerName);
    WriteLn('Discovery URI string: ', DiscoveryElement.DiscoveryUriString);
    WriteLn('Server capabilities: ', DiscoveryElement.ServerCapabilities.ToString);
  end;
end;

You can also obtain the results unflattened:

// This example shows how to obtain information about OPC UA servers from the Global Discovery Server (GDS).
// The result is hierarchical, i.e. each server is returned in one element, and the element contains all its discovery URLs.
//
// Find all latest examples here: https://opclabs.doc-that.com/files/onlinedocs/OPCLabs-OpcStudio/Latest/examples.html .

using System;
using OpcLabs.EasyOpc.UA;
using OpcLabs.EasyOpc.UA.Discovery;
using OpcLabs.EasyOpc.UA.OperationModel;

namespace UADocExamples._EasyUAClient
{
    partial class DiscoverGlobalServers
    {
        public static void Hierarchical()
        {
            // Instantiate the client object
            var client = new EasyUAClient();

            // Obtain collection of application elements
            UADiscoveryElementCollection discoveryElementCollection;
            try
            {
                discoveryElementCollection = client.DiscoverGlobalServers(
                    "opc.tcp://opcua.demo-this.com:58810/GlobalDiscoveryServer", 
                    flat:false);
            }
            catch (UAException uaException)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("*** Failure: {0}", uaException.GetBaseException().Message);
                return;
            }

            // Display results
            foreach (UADiscoveryElement discoveryElement in discoveryElementCollection)
            {
                Console.WriteLine();
                Console.WriteLine("Server name: {0}", discoveryElement.ServerName);
                Console.WriteLine("Discovery URI strings:");
                foreach (string discoveryUriString in discoveryElement.DiscoveryUriStrings)
                    Console.WriteLine("  {0}", discoveryUriString);
                Console.WriteLine("Server capabilities: {0}", discoveryElement.ServerCapabilities);
                Console.WriteLine("Application URI string: {0}", discoveryElement.ApplicationUriString);
                Console.WriteLine("Product URI string: {0}", discoveryElement.ProductUriString);
            }
        }
    }
}

In .NET, if you want to connect to the discovered OPC server later in your code by calling other methods, use the built-in conversion of UADiscoveryElement to UAEndpointDescriptor, and pass the resulting object as an endpointDescriptor argument either directly to some other method call.

Note that QuickOPC returns UADiscoveryElementCollection from all OPC UA discovery methods, but the amount of information contained in each returned UADiscoveryElement depends on the discovery approach used. For OPC UA Global Discovery and OPC UA Network Discovery, only following primary properties of each UADiscoveryElement are filled in:

OPC UA Global Discovery Server (GDS) is not part of OPC Data Client installation.
The features discussed here, or some of them, may not be available in all editions of the product. Check the Product Editions page for differences between the editions. The trial license has all features enabled (and is limited in period for which it provides valid data), but licenses for specific commercial editions may have functionality limitations.
See Also