Glossary · System coordination, integration and orchestration
Capability discovery
Also known as: capability negotiation, feature discovery
German: Fähigkeitserkennung
In systems integration, capability discovery is the process by which a system finds out at run time which functions, services, data or parameters another system offers, instead of relying only on configuration fixed at design time.
- System integration
In one sentence
Capability discovery lets a system find out at run time which functions, services or data another system offers.
Example
When a new screwdriving station joins the line, the cell controller browses its OPC UA address space and finds that it supports torque-angle programs but not torque-only programs.
How it applies
- Engineering: Capability discovery supports plug-and-produce concepts and mixed device versions. The consuming system must still decide what to do when an expected capability is missing: refuse, degrade or ask for configuration.
- Safety and security: Discovered capabilities must not be trusted blindly. Accept only authenticated partners, and never let automatic discovery enable safety-relevant functions without engineering review.
- Documentation: Describe which capabilities a device advertises, how they are named and how version differences appear. Integrators rely on this more than on marketing feature lists.
Capability discovery vs. endpoint discovery
Endpoint discovery finds where and how to connect to a system. Capability discovery then finds out what the connected system can do. Many systems use both steps one after the other when a new device joins the network.