To develop flexible, consistent rules and formats for exposing plant floor data using XML. Specifically it is the desire of the OPC Board that this effort initially focus on exposing the same data that the existing OPC interfaces expose today such as Data Access and later, Alarms and Events and that the working group strive to produce a simple, usable first release of the specification in as short a time as possible.

To leverage the work done by Microsoft and others on .NET, Web Services, SOAP and other XML frameworks.

To continue to enable and promote interoperability of applications and to simplify sharing and exchange of data at an even higher level.

To allow clients to subscribe to the types of messages it needs via some form of filtering.

To provide samples and examples as needed to help vendors understand and leverage this technology.