What's new in OPC Studio 2025.1

See also: Versions; Previous version: What's new in OPC Studio 2024.2

Internal version number: 5.82

Key changes:

• Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC)

Targeting

• .NET 6 is no longer supported (Microsoft end of support November 12, 2024). Use .NET 8 instead.
• The tools that come with OPC Studio (such as Connectivity Explorer and OpcCmd) are built for .NET 8.0 instead of .NET 6.0.
• Windows 11 version 24H2 (x64) added to the list of supported operating systems.

Component Improvements

OPC UA Client-Server

• The static UACertificateTypeTypeIds class now contains new properties for certificate type Ids related to ECC.
• The new UACommunicationProfile class holds information about protocol name, OPC UA transport profile, security policy, and data encoding. This object is then used at various places where this information is needed.

OPC UA Client

• OPC UA security policies with Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) can now be used for communication by the client. Supported new security policies are ECC_nistP256, ECC_nistP384, ECC_brainpoolP256r1 and ECC_brainpoolP384r1.
• Multiple client instance certificates are now auto-generated: One for each certificate type associated with supported security policies.
• A new Differentiator property has been added to the UAEndpointDescriptor class. It contains a string that you can use to make the endpoint descriptor look different from other endpoint descriptor(s) with otherwise the same properties, causing the client component to use and maintain separate connections for them.

OPC UA Server

• OPC UA security policies with Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) can now be used for communication by the server. Supported new security policies are ECC_nistP256, ECC_nistP384, ECC_brainpoolP256r1 and ECC_brainpoolP384r1.
• Multiple server instance certificates are now auto-generated: One for each certificate type associated with supported security policies.
• The new SecureLdsRegistration property on the EasyUAServer class controls whether the server developed with OPC Wizard will use OPC UA security when registering with the LDS.

User Interface

• When the component asks the user for acceptance of a peer OPC UA certificate (on Console, or on Windows desktop), it now includes a type of the public key of the certificate, indicating either RSA and the size of the key in bits, or ECDSA and the name of the elliptic curve used.

Component Refactorings

OPC UA Client

• In the UAEndpointSelectionPolicy class, the properties related to the OPC UA communication have been factored out to the CommunicationProfile property.