Wrapping my head around OPC UA - Part 1

When I am researching a new standard to do with industrial network communication, I like to dive in and immerse myself into all of the details of the standard. After that, I try to see what I can build with it. After all, my goal is not to write a white paper about it, but rather to use it practically to solve problems. But OPC UA poses a challenge in this regard. The specification is enormous, and there are a lot of options, and quite a bit of it is not implemented in any real world practical software applications.

So in learning OPC UA, I have decided to approach it differently by asking this question ... "What is it that I need to know about  OPC UA to use it in the building practical real world commercial automation applications?". So I want to understand the theory and parts of the spec in so far that it will allow me to use OPC UA software to build systems, as opposed to writing some esoteric white paper on it.

So I am going to start that process in this video and continue posting more videos over the next couple weeks to answer my question. I am going to be learning about OPC UA by creating these videos on it. Please feel free to comment on the videos and add your knowledge as it would help in my overall understanding of OPC UA.