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Abstract—Abstract.
Keywords—Internet of Things; physical devices; EcoDiF
I.
INTRODUCTION
Introduction.
II.
ECODIF: A WEB ECOSYSTEM OF PHYSICAL DEVICES
IoT environments are typically characterized by a high degree of hardware and software heterogeneity, several devices
with different capabilities/functionalities, large amount of network protocols, incompatible applications, and proprietary solutions that are hard to manage. Furthermore, the wide dissemination of the IoT paradigm has the potential of producing a considerable impact in the daily lives of the human beings, so that
new applications from several domains and that are based on interacting physical devices and engaged in complex relationships
arise. Given such scenario, it is necessary to provide abstractions
for physical devices and services to applications and end-users,
as well as means to manage the interoperability between such
heterogeneous devices.
In this context, our recent work [1] has introduced EcoDiF
(Web Ecosystem of Physical Devices), which is a Web platform
for connecting devices with applications and/or end-users in an
IoT ecosystem in which new ideas and products can be developed in an organic way. Therefore, the main goal of EcoDiF is
to integrate heterogeneous physical devices in order to provide
services for supporting real-time data control, visualization, processing, and storage, thus enabling to use it in several application
domains, such as environmental monitoring, public urban infrastructure monitoring, health care, prevention of environmental
disasters, etc.
A. Architecture and Implementation
In order to achieve its goals, EcoDiF is composed of several
modules (middleware services) that compose its logical architecture, as illustrated in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. EcoDiF architecture.
The Devices Connection Module aims to facilitate the connection of physical devices. In this perspective, device manufacturers can configure their devices according to the EcoDiF’s specific API to enable their integration with the platform, as well as
users can connect their pre-configured devices to perform the
operations of the provided API. Such devices are connected to
EcoDiF through customized drivers developed for each specific
device. These drivers play a very important role in terms of the
integration of the devices with EcoDiF since the heterogeneity
of such devices is abstracted away from the users and applications that make use of the data provided by them. Such transparency and interoperability are the main essential requirements for
middleware platforms in the context of the IoT paradigm and
consolidates one of the EcoDiF’s main goals. Therefore, EcoDiF
is able to provide a unified access to data and services provided
by the integrated devices through high-level interfaces, besides
contributing to make the development of applications easier in
the highly distributed and heterogeneous IoT environments. Furthermore, the complexity of the devices and the underlying network environment are hidden from applications and users, thus
releasing them from the task of explicitly manipulating infrastructure protocols and services.
Once the respective drivers enable the connection between
EcoDiF and the integrated devices, these drivers obtain the data
collected by the devices (the so-called feeds) and structure them
by using the EEML (Extended Environments Markup Language) protocol [2], which is a XML-based language that de-
scribe the data obtained from devices in a specific context (environment). Afterwards, such structured data are sent to EcoDiF
through HTTP PUT requests according to the REST (REpresentational State Transfer) architectural style [3, 4] in order to be
registered by the Data Manipulation Module.
The Visualization and Management Module provides a Web
interface to enable users to manage the devices connected to
EcoDiF. Through this interface, users can: (i) monitor the state
and the localization of their devices; (ii) create alerts and notifications (the so-called triggers) about the feeds, and; (iii) visualize historical data stored in the platform. In turn, the Collaboration Module aims to facilitate the collaboration among EcoDiF
users, thus enabling them to perform searches for devices and
applications from their respective metadata (type, user, localization, etc.) through the EcoDiF’s Web interface. The Storage
Module consists of two basic repositories: (i) a repository for
storing data by using a relational database, and; (ii) a repository
for storing application scripts in a file system. It is important to
highlight that these repositories may use a Cloud Computing infrastructure [5] to store relational data and files, thus providing
quality attributes such as robustness, reliability, security, availability, and scalability. The Common Services Module aggregates
mechanisms inherent to the platform, such as security (in terms
of user authenticity, confidentiality, and integrity), applications
life cycle, transactions, etc.
Finally, the Applications Module is intended to provide a
model and environment for programming and executing applications that make use of the data (feeds) available at EcoDiF and
generate new information to be available at the platform. In
EcoDiF, these applications are built as Web mashups [6], which
are ad-hoc Web applications created from the composition of
different types of information provided by several sources. For
instance, a sensor monitors the temperature in a given location,
but the user wishes to combine this information with a map that
informs the localization of the collected measures. Therefore, a
single mashup application can compose such temperature and
localization information. For developing applications, EcoDiF
adopts the EMML (Enterprise Mashup Markup Language) language [7], which is an open XML-based language for developing Web mashup applications from by integrating data from several sources, as well as from Web services and relational databases.
Given the features of its modules, EcoDiF envisions four
profiles of stakeholders (as depicted in Fig. 1), namely:
(i) device manufacturers, which develop drivers to their
devices in order to make them compatible with the EcoDiF’s
API;
(ii) data providers, which are device owners that make the
data produced by their devices available at EcoDiF through the
specific drivers for each device;
(iii) application developers, which build Web applications
or services that take as inputs data (raw data provided by the
connected devices or more refined data produced as output of
other applications) available at EcoDiF or produced by any
other Web accessible resource, for their business purposes, and;
(iv) data consumers, which are users that interact with
EcoDiF in order to consult information (about devices and
provided data, applications, etc.) that is available at the
platform.
III.
EVALUATION
Evaluation.
A. Case Studies
Case studies.
1) Parcipatory Sensing
Participatory Sensing.
2) Data Processing Centers Monitoring
Data Processing Centers (DPCs) monitoring.
IV.
RELATED WORK
V.
FINAL REMARKS
Related work.
Final remarks.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work is supported by the Brazilian Education and Research Network (RNP) through the GT-EcoDiF Working Group.
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OMA EMML Documentation:
http://www.openmashup.org/omadocs/v1.0/index.html