Dear Sir,

QuickOPC 5.32 Beta is now available here: cdn.opclabs.com/files/downloads/QuickOpc/5.32/QuickOPC-5.32.exe .
Parts like documentation/help, and examples, are not finished yet.

Please have a look, however, at the "What's New" document (a link to it is installed to the Start menu with the product), in order to understand the changes made.

I specifically recommend that you uninstall any previous version before installing the QuickOPC 5.32 Beta. The reason for it is that version 5.32 no longer installs the runtime assemblies into GAC by default. Simply reinstalling the previous version with 5.32 would keep the old assemblies in the GAC, which would then become a rich source of various confusions. Uninstalling the previous version should remove the old assemblies from the GAC.

Best regards

We already have a Beta of version 5.32. The code is basically finished, but due to nature of the key changes in this version (COM tools support for OPC UA), there is a lot of new examples, documentation, and testing to be done.

The change that is subject of this topic is independent of the above, and is fully completed. If you need, we can give you access to the Beta in coming weeks.

Best regards

Release of version 5.32 is planned for November or December 2014.

The change itself is not very big, so theoretically it can be made "simply" into a new build of the current version 5.31. The problem is that we have a general policy where the features and APIs remain the same for the same version number, and we make new builds inside the same version only for bug fixes and very small functionality improvements - I think that makes a lot of sense to the customers.

But this particular change also requires a change in the API (use of plain Collection instead of KeyedCollection), and therefore may represent a breaking change for customers who are already using version 5.31.

What is your schedule and what are your expectations in this matter please?

Before I answer your question - are you using QuickOPC 5.2x, or 5.3x please?

You are right. In some cases (such as for Properties, or as a part of an ObjectType), the OPC UA specification prescribes that the browse names are unique; but in general case, they are not required to be unique. To me that's kind of unlucky point in the spec, because it kind of defeats the purpose of having "names" in the first place. In OPC "Classic", for example, the names ("short item IDs") must be unique.

In our past tests, we have not met with a server that would return non-unique names, and I think it was a contributing factor in deciding to use the KeyedCollection<,>.
And, it has not caused problems so far. But based on your finding, we will change this to a simple Collection<>, which will contain all occurrences of non-unique browse names. This change will go into the upcoming QuickOPC version 5.32.