Internet of Things Publications

 

The Internet of Things is the collection of uniquely identifiable objects embedded in or accessible by Internet hosts. Enterprises can monitor the activities and operation of people, machines, buildings, engineering structures, and the natural environment and, in some cases, control that operation, using autonomous sensors and actuators connected to the Internet. Current advances in technology bring new opportunities for business benefit, and Enterprise Architects are looking to take full advantage of this. The Internet of Things is one of the new technology areas addressed by the Open Platform 3.0™ Forum.

The White Paper An Introduction to the Internet of Things and Lifecycle Management introduces the vision of the IoT Work Group of the Open Platform 3.0 Forum, explains the scope and definition of IoT, its emergence, and how its development and acceptance will be assured under the auspices of The Open Group.

The Open Data Format (O-DF), an Open Group Internet of Things (IoT) standard, represents information about things in a standardized way that can be understood and exchanged by all information systems that manage IoT-related data. In the IoT, information about a product or a “thing” is often distributed over many different devices, systems, and organizations. The O-DF can be used for publishing the available data using ordinary Uniform Resource Locator (URL) addresses. O-DF structures can also be used for requesting and sending published data between systems, notably when used together with the O-MI standard.

The Open Messaging Interface (O-MI), an Open Group Internet of Things (IoT) Standard, fulfills the same purpose in the IoT Standards as HTTP does for the Internet. Typical examples of exchanged data are sensor readings, alarm or lifecycle events, requests for historical data, notifications about availability of new data, changes to existing data, etc. Just as HTTP can be used for transporting payloads in other formats as well as HTML, the O-MI can be used for transporting payloads in almost any format. XML might currently be the most common text-based payload format but others, such as JSON, CSV, etc. may also be used. A defining characteristic of O-MI is that O-MI nodes do not have predefined roles, as it follows a peer-to-peer communications model.

The White Paper Reference Architectures and Open Group Standards for the Internet of Things discusses how architects can use standards to define IoT systems and solutions, compares four leading and emerging standard IoT reference architectures, and explains the role of The Open Group IoT Standards.

All these documents, and other Open Group publications, are also available for download in PDF form from The Open Group online bookstore.

If you have questions about or comments on any of these publications, or about any aspect of Open Platform 3.0, please send mail to platform3-input@opengroup.org.