UNS at the edge

A UNS is a contract, not a broker. What actually makes plant data usable — and what it costs to stop paying for proprietary middleware.

Draft

This page is seeded structure, not finished writing. The author has not rewritten it yet.

Every plant already moves data. Ask where the meaning lives and the answer is usually a spreadsheet, a tag naming convention nobody wrote down, and one integrator's head.

The broker is the easy part

Choosing MQTT or picking a broker is a weekend decision. The hard part is agreeing what a topic means, who owns it, and what breaks when it changes.

Contracts, not conventions

A namespace without a schema and an owner is a naming convention with better marketing. This is the argument for treating the information model as a reviewable artefact in git.

OPC UA information models without the XML

Hand-written NodeSet2.xml is why most companion-spec work stalls. Authoring in YAML and compiling to the standard output changes who can participate.

i3X and MCP

Two emerging standards that matter for discoverability, and why betting on them reduced proprietary software reliance by 90% on one fleet.

What it cost

The honest accounting: what replacing proprietary middleware actually took, where it was harder than promised, and what stayed proprietary on purpose.

Related work

Start-Alpha

One blueprint to deploy, govern and recover distributed infrastructure — from edge to cloud. Secure software supply-chain, from OS to applications.

twinmodel

A toolkit for authoring ontology. Compact YAML transpiles to OPC-UA ModelDesign.xml, CESMII i3X 1.0 JSON. Embedded catalog of companion specifications and MCP server.