opcgw Development Roadmap

Strategic Goal: Deliver production-ready v2.0 with feature parity to v1.0 + new capabilities (data persistence, web UI, security hardening).

Principle: Quality over Speed. We’re investing time to ensure v2.0 is genuinely better than v1.0, not just different.

Timeline Overview

Epic 1: Foundation ✅ → Epic 2: Persistence → Epic 3: Commands → Epic 4: Scalability 
    ↓                        ↓                    ↓                   ↓
  (Done)              (In Planning)          (Queued)             (Queued)
                     
        ↓                    ↓                    ↓
    Epic 5: Visibility → Epic 6: Security → Epic 8: Web UI → Production v2.0
    (Queued)          (Queued)            (Queued)          (Q3 2026)
    
    
Post-Launch:
    ↓
Epic 7: Real-Time Subscriptions & Historical Data

Current Status: Epic 1 ✅ COMPLETE

Epic: Crash-Free Gateway Foundation
Duration: April 2-19, 2026 (2 weeks)
Status: ✅ All 5 stories complete

Completed Stories

  1. ✅ 1-1: Update Dependencies and Rust Toolchain
    • Rust 1.87.0 → 1.94.0
    • tonic 0.13 → 0.14 (major), async-opcua 0.16 → 0.17 (major)
    • 3 breaking changes managed systematically
  2. ✅ 1-2: Migrate Logging from log4rs to Tracing
    • Replaced log4rs with tracing ecosystem
    • 136 log calls converted to structured fields
    • Per-module logging via tracing-appender
  3. ✅ 1-3: Comprehensive Error Handling
    • 15 production panic sites eliminated
    • Zero panics in production code paths
    • Graceful degradation on errors
  4. ✅ 1-4: Graceful Shutdown with CancellationToken
    • SIGINT and SIGTERM handling (Docker-safe)
    • Clean shutdown sequence with timeout protection
    • Tested token propagation across tasks
  5. ✅ 1-5: Configuration Validation and Clean Startup
    • Comprehensive validation with clear error messages
    • Field-level error reporting
    • Environment variable override support

Key Achievements

Next Phase: Epics 2-6 (Production Features)

Epic 2: Data Persistence (Next)

Timeline: ~2-3 weeks (10-12 stories, tighter granularity)
Why It Matters: Metrics must survive gateway restarts
What It Delivers:

Key Stories:

  1. StorageBackend trait + InMemoryBackend
  2. SQLite backend and schema (5 tables)
  3. Metric persistence and batch writes
  4. Metric restore on startup
  5. Historical data pruning + more (broken into smaller pieces)

Epic 3: Reliable Command Execution (After Epic 2)

Timeline: ~1-2 weeks (3 stories)
Why It Matters: Operators need to send commands to devices (feature parity with v1.0)
What It Delivers:

Key Stories:

  1. SQLite-backed FIFO command queue
  2. Command parameter validation
  3. Command delivery status reporting

Epic 4: Scalable Data Collection (After Epic 3)

Timeline: ~2 weeks (4 stories)
Why It Matters: Handle 100+ devices with all metric types
What It Delivers:

Key Stories:

  1. Poller refactoring to SQLite backend
  2. Support all ChirpStack metric types
  3. API pagination for large deployments (100+ devices)
  4. Auto-recovery from ChirpStack outages

Epic 5: Operational Visibility (After Epic 4)

Timeline: ~1-2 weeks (3 stories)
Why It Matters: Operators see clear warnings about stale data and gateway health
What It Delivers:

Key Stories:

  1. OPC UA server refactoring to SQLite backend
  2. Stale data detection and status codes
  3. Gateway health metrics in OPC UA

Epic 6: Security Hardening (After Epic 5)

Timeline: ~1-2 weeks (3 stories)
Why It Matters: Production security — no exposed credentials, controlled access
What It Delivers:

Key Stories:

  1. Credential management via environment variables
  2. OPC UA security endpoints and authentication
  3. Connection limiting

Final Phase: Epic 8 (Web UI)

Epic 8: Web Configuration & Hot-Reload (After Epic 6)

Timeline: ~3 weeks (8 stories)
Why It Matters: Major break from v1.0 — web UI instead of TOML file editing
What It Delivers:

Key Stories:

  1. Axum web server and basic authentication
  2. Gateway status dashboard
  3. Live metric values display
  4. Application CRUD via web UI
  5. Device and metric mapping CRUD
  6. Command CRUD via web UI
  7. Configuration hot-reload
  8. Dynamic OPC UA address space mutation

Post-Launch: Epic 7

Epic 7: Real-Time Subscriptions & Historical Data

Timeline: 2-3 weeks (4 stories) — after production deployment
What It Delivers:

Production Readiness Checklist

Before v2.0 is deployed to production:

Target Deployment: Q3 2026 (6-9 months from Epic 2 start)

Key Principles

1. Quality Over Speed

We’re investing time to deliver v2.0 that’s genuinely better than v1.0, not just different. A v2.0 that feels worse than v1.0 would undermine adoption.

2. Feature Parity Baseline

Every feature available in v1.0 should be available in v2.0. This ensures users don’t experience regression.

3. Tighter Story Granularity

Epics 2-8 use 10-12 stories instead of 5-6 to provide better visibility and control. Smaller stories = more frequent validation points.

4. Thorough Planning

Replicate Epic 1’s approach: PRD validation, architecture design, detailed story dev notes. This enables confident execution.

How to Track Progress

Questions?

See the Architecture page for system design details, or the Quick Start guide to get opcgw running today.