Overview

oBIX is designed to provide access to the embedded software systems which sense and control the world around us.
oBIX Version 1.1, Working Draft 06, 08 June 2010

oBIX is expected to help improve operational efficiencies for end-users by bridging the gap between facility systems and enterprise applications. Facility operators, building owners, and tenants will be able to make decisions based on a comprehensive view of their enterprise including lifecycle costs, environmental considerations, operations, and other performance factors.

Normalization

Version 1.0 of oBIX provides a normalized representation for three of these:

• Points: representing a single scalar value and its status - typically these map to sensors, actuators, or configuration variables like a setpoint;
• Histories: modeling and querying of time sampled point data. Typically edge devices collect a time stamped history of point values which can be fed into higher level applications for analysis;
• Alarming: modeling, routing, and acknowledgment of alarms. Alarms indicate a condition which requires notification of either a user or another application.

Architecture

The oBIX architecture is based on the following principles:

• Object Model: a concise object model used to define all oBIX information
• XML Syntax: a simple XML syntax for expressing the object model
• URIs: URIs are used to identify information within the object model
• REST: a small set of verbs is used to access object via their URIs and transfer their state via XML
• Contracts: a template model for expressing new oBIX "types"
• Extendibility: providing for consistent extendibility using only these concepts

Operations

Operations are the things that you can "do" to an oBIX object. They are akin to methods in traditional OO languages. Typically they map to commands rather than a variable that has continuous state.

All operations take exactly one object as a parameter and return exactly one object as a result. The in and out attributes define the contract list for the input and output objects.

I have illustrated how to invoke these operations by Postman, you can refer to obix_intro.docx for detailed information.

References

• obix.postman_collection
  I export from my Postman for your testing, and provide Document oBIX APIs on Postman Cloud for your reference.