Building Scalable Open Web of Things

Building a Scalable and Open World Wide
Web of Things
University of Lugano
26 March 2009
Vlad Trifa and Dominique Guinard

Outline

‣ Introduction
‣ Web of Things
‣ REST on devices
‣ Gateways
‣ Goodies

Thursday, March 26, 2009 Vlad Trifa - SAP/ETH Zurich - www.webofthings.com

From barcodes...

‣ Growing trend to connect
physical objects to the Web
‣ Barcodes do that well


To RFID tags...

‣ With RFID tags more
things are possible
‣ Each object has an ID
‣ Read at a distance
‣ New interaction modes
‣ ...

Image courtesy of Timo Arnall - http://www.elasticspaces.com

To microprocessors...

‣ Web connectivity: cheap &
ubiquitous
‣ Emergence of the physical Web
‣ Beyond Websites and browsers
‣ Soon more devices than humans
‣ And real-time Web
‣ RSS/ATOM, Twitter, etc..


The Challenge
How to integrate such a wide range of devices as
part of distributed applications (without a PhD in Computer science)?

‣ Devices with different capabilities/functions
‣ Tons of networking protocols
‣ Many incompatible applications/middlewares
‣ Proprietary solutions are rigid and difficult to customize

‣ Need for a common ground for devices!
‣ Maximizes interoperability, scalability, and evolvability
‣ Emphasizes reuse and sharing
‣ Easy to use
‣ Flexible


Sounds very much like the Web...

Reuse the Web standards to develop
applications for networked objects.

‣ Web makes applications cheaper to develop
‣ 1.5 billion people use it and it is simple
‣ It is scalable, loosely-coupled, and evolvable
‣ Integrate and share real-time device data
‣ Devices and their properties become browsable

‣ Web becomes a collection of devices that can be
recombined at runtime to build applications


REpresentational State Transfer (REST)

‣ Architectural style behind
the Web (NOT a standard)
HTTP CRUD

‣ Information unit is a
POST Create
resource identified by URI
GET Read
‣ Uniform interface
PUT Update
‣ Self-described messages
(MIME types) DELETE Delete
‣ Stateless


REST on devices

‣ Devices and their properties are RESTful resources
GET device/sensors/temperature
POST device/sensor/LED

‣ Three possibilities to do that
‣ Full REST (HTTP) - Ideally!!
‣ Full customized solution with a gateway
‣ A mix of both

‣ But most devices can’t always have full REST...
‣ Low-power
‣ No HTTP or no IP support
‣ Proprietary protocols or API

Gateways

‣ Enable RESTful access to
devices
‣ Any computer that runs Java
(NAS, routers, etc...)
‣ Fully Web compliant


Smart Gateways

‣ Augment functionality (& perf) of devices and
leverage all what is available for the Web

‣ Not just a Web page/interface for device data
‣ Layering
‣ Caching of data
‣ Failure masking

‣ Complex functionalities not feasible on devices
‣ Complex decision processes
‣ Energy consumption optimization
‣ Localized access control and security

Thanks!!!!!

www.webofthings.com


Building Scalable Open Web of Things

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Building Scalable Open Web of Things

Similar to Building Scalable Open Web of Things (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Building Scalable Open Web of Things