Industrial Internet Connectivity Framework | Page 27

Connectivity Framework 4: Connectivity Framework Layer

4 CONNECTIVITY FRAMEWORK LAYER

The connectivity framework layer provides a logical data exchange service to the endpoints participating in an information exchange. It can observe and“ understand” the data exchanges, and use that knowledge to optimize data delivery. It is a logical functional layer on top of the connectivity transport layer( see Figure 2-1) and should be agnostic to the technologies used to implement connectivity transports.

The key role of the connectivity framework layer is to provide syntactic interoperability among the endpoints. Data that is exchanged is structured in a common, unambiguous data format, independent of endpoint implementation, and decoupled from the hardware and programming platform. Depending on the application logic behind endpoint, one or more data exchange patterns may be required. There are two predominant data exchange pattern styles: publishsubscribe( see section 4.1.6) and request-reply( see section 4.1.7).

A key benefit of the connectivity framework is to abstract and hide the implementation of the various functions so that the applications that use the connectivity framework won’ t need to know the implementation, just use its capabilities. It reduces the cost of development and increases productivity and quality.

4.1 CORE FUNCTIONS

The key connectivity framework functions include a data resource model, publish-subscribe and request-reply data exchange patterns, data quality of service, data security, and a programming API. These are summarized in Figure 4-1 and described below.

Distributed Data Interoperability & Management

Framework

API Governance

Figure 4-1: Connectivity framework layer functions.

Physical

IIC: PUB: G5: V1.0: PB: 20170228- 27-