Download Background - Continental Automated Buildings Association

Building Controls
XML/Web Services Guideline
Organizational Meeting
April 23, 2003
Sponsored by:
CABA Intelligent & Integrated Buildings Council
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Agenda
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Introductions
What are Web Services and XML?
How does this apply to building controls?
Are standards needed?
How should this group proceed?
Assignment of action items
Adjourn
Introductions
• Paul Ehrlich - Acting Chair
– Business Development leader for Trane’s Global
Controls group
– Active in many standards groups over the years
– See lots of pressure for controls to be part of
the IT infrastructure
– Believe that standards are needed for this to be
commercially viable
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What is XML?
• Extensible Markup Language
• A data representation format for
externalizing information (objects, values)
• Looks like HTML - angle bracket tags
• Unlike HTML, closing tags are required
– XML must be well-formed: each element must
be completely enclosed by a parent element
• Can be validated against a schema
– Describes legal format of XML document
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What is XML?
• Some companion W3C recommendations
– XPATH: language for addressing parts of an
XML document - used by XSLT
– Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL)
• a language for transforming XML documents
• an XML vocabulary for specifying formatting
semantics
– XSLT: language for transforming XML
documents into other XML documents
• XSL without the formatting
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What are Web Services?
• An application designed for machine
consumption
• Universal Description, Discovery and
Integration (UDDI)
– Web service directory
– Describes services available from a particular
business or other entity
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What are Web Services?
• Web Service Description Language (WSDL)
– Describes web service in terms of the messages
and the protocol
– After locating a service through UDDI, get
WSDL file to learn how to use the service
• SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)
– XML based protocol for exchanging information
– Commonly used for web services
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Application to Building Control?
• Most likely utilized at network
communications - not at small controllers
• Not a replacement for BACnet, LonTalk, DALI
and other industry specific protocols
• Functions:
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– exchange data
– alarm / off normal information
– scheduling information
– trend logs
– configuration / network management
Application to Building Control?
• Other functions?
• How is it being used today?
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Are standards needed?
• XML and web services are already standards
- do we need to define use for building
control?
• What do our customers expect?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages
of standards?
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How should we proceed?
• Proposal is to create a guideline
• Need to determine:
– who will sign up to do work
– what are our deliverables
– what is the schedule
– how we will liaison with other organizations
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Assignment of action items
• Proposed tasks
• Volunteers to fill roles
• Date and time for next meeting (Real
Conn?)
• Others as determined
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Conclusion
• Questions and comments
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