The live binding allows you to extend your controls and components with one or more bindings. The binding can perform various operations, such as read or write values, or continuously update (subscribe). The data reside in the binding source – e.g. in OPC Data Access or OPC Unified Architecture server, and are provided through a connectivity component for that binding source. The other end of the binding is the binding target. The usual binding targets can accept or provide values of various types, and are therefore referred to as value targets. When values are transferred between to or from the target, value conversions can be made – using string formats, or converters.

The live binding functionality is provided by a generic binding extender. The specific types of bindings are made available by binding providers, which are encapsulated in binder components. The binding extender keeps binding bags, i.e. collections of bindings for each control being extended.

Operations on bindings can be tied to event sources and thus performed automatically with events in your application. In order to handle multiple bindings together, it is possible to define binding groups and assign bindings to them. Binding templates can be defined to make it easier to create new bindings that share similar characteristics.

The objects and terms briefly mentioned above are described in more detail sin the subsequent chapters.