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

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