Standards

Mocana is a supporter of open industry standards. We took a proactive stance in establishing a 'Web Services for Devices' standards discussion group inside OASIS. Initial participation included major platform vendors, telecoms, OEMs and ISVs.

Below is a scope statement for the OASIS Web Services for Devices standards discussion group that was authored by Mocana.

background
Several members of OASIS are planning to organize one or more new standards projects concentrating on connected and mobile devices, and articulating web services functionality for managing and coordinating them as interoperable networks. OASIS will launch a discussion list. (open to nonmembers as well as members) for scoping those efforts.

Together with Mocana Corp. and others, OASIS presented the concept at a May 2003 CommerceNet industry event, and identified two potential groups of interested technologists and users: those interested in the horizontal development of device-specific versions of relevant web service functions, and those focused on specific applications in healthcare. One possible organizational strategy, which should be discussed by the community of potential participants, is a generalized Web Services for Devices TC focusing on the horizontal issues, and a second Web Services for Medical Devices TC to articulate the specific requirements of that industry. The draft below is a starting point for further discussion by interested parties and prospective participants.

statement of purpose
Computing is undergoing a major evolution to "networks of devices". Tomorrow's device networks may eclipse the scope of today's people and computer networks. Forrester predicts that the number of devices on [the Net] will reach 870 million in five years and skyrocket to 14 billion by 2010. According to the study, of these 14 billion devices, 95% will not be PCs.

While the majority of business processes will encompass these connected devices, there are business and technical obstacles to their widespread adoption and deployment. This technical committee aims to address these obstacles, by leveraging and where appropriate adapting current web services technologies to the special environments and use cases posed by wireless connected devices. Just as web services enable loosely-coupled business systems to interact more efficiently, the services provided by physical devices may be managed, orchestrated, and made interactive and reliable using basic web services methods. Connected devices will be more capable of error detection, self-correction and re-routing, as "management by exception" becomes the norm in the physical world -- whether it be factory floor machinery that knows it has broken down, medical diagnostics equipment that has triggered an alarm, or RFID readers that are able to report delivery and location of supplies.

Development of a set of service orchestration protocol suitable for devices would have potential applicability across a large number of vertical markets. We anticipate the early opportunities for applications and proofs-of-concept will occur in healthcare, supply chain automation, telecomm & internetworking and the energy sector. Where relevant, we expect to work closely with existing OASIS technical committees (such as e-Procurement and Emergency Services) to identity appropriate use cases and demonstration opportunities.

The purpose of the initiative is to create standards to allow device manufacturers and service providers to be able to develop relevant services (e.g., status report, alarm and data supply functions), regardless of the device architecture, that work interoperably with infrastructure across multiple software platforms that support the standards.

Wherever possible, existing web services standards initiatives will be leveraged and extended to encompass devices. We anticipate close coordinating relationships and possible re-use of components of a number of existing OASIS configuration, discovery, display, management, messaging, reliability and security specifications, including:

Provisioning Services
Security Services
XACML
Web Services Distributed Management
Web Services Reliable Messaging
Web Services Remote Portlets

At the same time, some aspects of sub-PC devices may require special attention in developing appropriate specifications and practices. Unlike general computing PCs, many embedded systems are very limited in capability, processing power, and storage. The systems interfacing to these devices must identify and account for these limitations. Error recovery is an important issue for embedded devices; it is possible that different degrees of ability and tolerance for rollbacks and the ability to efficiently abort a super-sized operation are needed in this domain

list of deliverables

The proposed TC(s) may proceed in four steps:

Collection, harmonization and prioritization of the technology and user requirements for service-oriented device architecture in the subject field;
Definition of one or more specifications of data standards suitable for use in connecting and coordinating remote devices on a vendor-neutral basis. (The group may, if it proves possible and appropriate, specify subsets or use profiles from other existing OASIS standards suitable for this type of application.)
Possibly, the articulation, in white papers or further work, key functional components of the effective use of web services for devices.
Identification of additional verticals where focused specific efforts may be needed. (In scoping, for example, it may become clear that the hardware or applications in a particular field impose their own needs for device type recognition, special issues of distance or configuration, or other standardizable matters specific to that field).

The work is expected to address a range of issues, possibly including:

Device-to-device interoperability, and the parameters, taxonomy and discovery methods necessary to achieve it
Internet-scale device identity; authentication by device rather than user
The special demands placed on existing messaging, provisioning and security schemes by intermittent, highly asynchronous objects
Scale, message and object size negotiation
Operation abortion and recovery
Transference of locality and ownership
Network outages, and non-static network identity
Network memory for persistence and logging
Acute diversity of bandwidth and device type; possible special taxonomies for classes of device
Additional activities that may be needed to fulfill the requirements of this framework.