=============
OPC-UA Basics
=============

.. todo:: How much should be in this chapter?

    Are we only going to link to external references and skip explaining the OPC-UA basics?
    The `open62541 documentation <http://www.open62541.org/doc/master/>`_ for example
    contains a lot of information about how OPC-UA works but in many chapters it also
    assumes the reader is interested in how the library works. Where do we need to start
    such that new users can later understand how the concepts of OPC-UA are represented
    by this library?



External References
===================

.. note:: We are open to suggestions for this section!
    You know good tutorials, help pages, blogs or other resources? Share them with us!


https://reference.opcfoundation.org
    Luckily the complete documentation about OPC-UA is available for free. As this is
    the official reference documentation, you will find links to this page in the
    source code of this package and also in this documentation where necessary.

https://www.open62541.org
    Open Source (MPL v2.0) OPC UA stack implemented in C. If you need a library which
    runs on your embedded device have a look at it! Also the documentation is great
    and contains a lot of details about the architecture and datamodeling in OPC-UA.

https://www.unified-automation.com
    Unified Automation provides different products for the OPC-UA ecosystem. Most of the
    tools are available as a free download with an evaluation license (non commercial use).
