Azure Gateway DataRepository
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Azure, Cloud Computing, Object-Oriented Internet, OPC Unified Architecture, Reactive Networking (RxNetworking), Machine to Machine Communication, Internet of Things
This project shows an example implementation of an OPC UA PubSub to Azure embedded gateway. It is implemented as a composable part of the Reactive Networking Application (RxNetworking App
). The article covers a description of the architecture supporting the reactive communication design pattern. The RxNetworking App
is an aggregation of Producer
and Consumer
entities derived from DataRepository
. They must provide interconnection to real-time process data, hence they are recognized as an extension of the DataRepository
class. AzureGateway
part fulfills the Consumer
role and uses out-of-band communication to push telemetry data to the cloud.
Working through this tutorial gives you an introductory understanding of the steps required to implement the Consumer
role of the RxNetworking
application. It is an example of Semantic-Data
reactive networking based on specification. The document covers a description of selected fetuses relevant to this specification.
This project is proof of concept that out-of-band communication for OPC UA PubSub can be implemented based on the DataRepository
concept. This workout will be described in an independent article. To get the full story and your copy check out the preprint from . Main purpose of this preprint it to enable an early community review. We will consider your contribution to be applied to the final version of the article.
The obtained results prove that the embedded gateway archetype implementation is possible based on the existing standalone framework supporting reactive interoperability atop of the M2M communication compliant with the . It is worth stressing that there is no dependency on the Client/Server session-oriented relationship. In contrast to the architecture described in the OPC UA Part 1 specification, the publisher/consumer roles are not tightly coupled with the Address Space of the OPC UA Server embedded component. In the proposed approach, the cloud interoperability is supported by a dedicated part employing out-of-band communication only without dependency on the OPC UA functionality. In contrast to the middleware concept, the gateway functionality is implemented as a part - composable to the whole without programming skills. It makes it possible to modify its functionality later after releasing the library or even deploying the application program in the production environment because the part is composed at the runtime.
Concluding, the paper describes a proof of concept that it is possible to integrate selected cloud services (e.g. Azure) with the Cyber-physical network atop of the OPC UA PubSub applying the proposed architecture and deployment scenario. In contrast to limiting the PubSub role to export the data from the Address Space exposed by a selected OPC UA server out of the OPC UA ecosystem, applying the proposed solution enables interoperability of the cloud services and the Cyber-physical network as one whole.
I would like to acknowledge the project from which the AzureGateway
implementation of the DataRepository
was derived. I would like to thank for his inputs/inspirations, feedback, and cooperation in this respect.
Here are steps undertook to implement the Consumer
role in the application:
DataManagementSetup
: this class has been overridden by the PartDataManagementSetup
class and it initializes the communication and binds data fields recovered form messages to local resources.
IBindingFactory
: has been implemented in the class PartBindingFactory
that is responsible to gather the data recovered from the Message
instances pulled from the Distribution Channel
. The received data is driven to the Azure services using configured out-of-band protocol.
IConfigurationFactory
: the class PartConfigurationFactory
implements this interface to be used for the configuration file opening.
DataManagementSetup
implementationThe PartDataManagementSetup
constructor initializes all properties, which are injection points of all parts composing this role.
Finally the DataManagementSetup.Start()
method is called to initialize the infrastructure, enable all associations and start pumping the data.
IBindingFactory
implementationImplementation of this interface is a basic step to implement Consumer
functionality. The DataRepository
represents data holding assets in the RxNetworking App
and, following the proposed approach, the IBindingFactory
interface is implemented by an external part. It captures functionality responsible for accessing the process data represented by the LocalResources
. The LocalResources
represents the external part that has a very broad usage purpose. For example, it may be any kind of process data source/destination, and to name a few Raw Data
, OPC UA Address Space Management
, Azure
cloud-based front-end, etc.
The AzureGateway
functional package has been implemented based on the Consumer
concept. This particular Consumer
(PartBindingFactory
) implements the IBindingFactory
interface to gather the data recovered from the Message
instances pulled from the Distribution Channel
. The received data is driven to the Azure services using configured out-of-band' protocol. An instance of the IBindingFactory
is responsible to create objects implementing IBinding
that can be used by the Consumer
to forward the data retrieved from NetworkMessag
received over the wire to Azure services.
The proposed implementation of the Azure gateway proves that the DataRepository
and associated entities, i.e. Local Resources
, Consumer
, Producer
can be implemented as external parts, and consequently, the application scope may cover practically any concern that can be separated from the core OPC UA PubSub communication engine implementation.
IConfigurationFactory
implementationConfigurationDataConsumer.BoilersSet.xml
attached to the project.
Note; This library is not considered to be published as the NuGet package.
See also the list of contributors who participated in this project and the Acknowledgment
section.
IEncodingFactory
and IMessageHandlerFactory
: have been implemented in external common libraries and Consumer
doesn't depend on this implementation - current implementation of the interfaces is localized as services using an instance of the interface.
In this example, it is assumed that is implemented to resolve references to any external services.
the library . In a typical scenario, this implementation should not be considered for further modification. The only open question is how to provide the name of the file containing the configuration of this role. This role uses an independent configuration file:
We use for versioning. For the versions available, see the page of the project.
- main contributor of this project.
Postół M., Szymczak P. (2021) Object-Oriented Internet Cloud Interoperability. In: Paszynski M., Kranzlmüller D., Krzhizhanovskaya V.V., Dongarra J.J., Sloot P.M. (eds) Computational Science – ICCS 2021. ICCS 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 12745. Springer, Cham.
Available on
ICCS 2021: INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COMPUTATIONAL Presentation is available on
Postół M. (2020) Object-Oriented Internet Reactive Interoperability. In: Krzhizhanovskaya V. et al. (eds) Computational Science – ICCS 2020. ICCS 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 12141. Springer, Cham;
Postół M. (2020) , presentation, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.33984.56323
Mariusz Postol, chapter in book , Publisher: Lodz University of Technology Press; ISBN: 978-83-7283-999-2
Mariusz Postol, , , 2015,
API Browser: the preliminary code help documentation -