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News Release from: Lantronix | Subject: M2M integration
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial Team on 01 September 2006

Blogging for configuration and control

XML and RSS can add substantial value to applications such as factory automation: Eric Davis and Matthew McFadden of Lantronix explain.

A blog is typically seen as the journal-style website of a particular person that provides a way for readers to respond Blogs have become quite valuable on the Internet for sharing a wide variety of opinions and ideas

With the popularity of blogging on the rise, wouldn't it be handy to have the ability to employ this same concept to generate, aggregate and distribute important information that can be used for device or machine configuration and control?.

Good news: it actually is possible.

Making your machine a "blogger" can be easily accomplished using the right protocols and technologies.

By using XML and RSS, enterprise IT applications now have the power to build custom web content, access all types of data and aggregate it as readily available information.

As XML and RSS are becoming more widely accepted as standards for configuration, control and information transport, embedded applications are now starting to exploit and revolutionise the capabilities of these protocols at the device level.

Networked devices are able to communicate with these business and Internet protocols, enabling rapid integration of device information into mainstream enterprise IT applications.

The device assets in a company now have the capability to deliver in real time business related information to various groups or individuals within the organisation.

This article will discuss how to use RSS in the enterprise beyond its original mission of sending out newsletters and data streams or updates.

It will show how RSS can function as an integration tool, so enterprises can easily transmit data feeds that can be integrated into portals and other applications and used as an alternative to e-mail, Instant Messaging, or other tools.

It is also important that embedded system designers fully understand the capabilities of XML and RSS, how these protocols differ and how they work together so they can be incorporated into an application utilising their flexible and effective means for transferring and collecting information.

Extensible Markup Language, or as it is more commonly referred to XML, is a format that allows different devices to communicate with each other.

XML provides the potential to alleviate many of the interoperability problems associated with the sharing of data from a variety of devices.

It allows information to be encoded with meaningful structure and semantics that both computers and humans can understand.

Thus, it is an ideal format for information exchange and can easily be extended to include user-specified and industry-specific content.

XML was designed as a flexible means to create common information formats allowing both the format and the data to be shared.

Because of this ease of use and flexibility, more and more devices are using XML.

With this growth in popularity, it makes it that much easier for designers and engineers to interface their devices.

RSS is an XML-based format for distributing and aggregating Web content.

Using RSS, users can easily disseminate an unlimited amount of information easier than ever before.

As an XML format, RSS is easily consumed by other programs.

Utilising XML and RSS is an extremely simple way to link content for controlling and managing devices.

The technology behind RSS describes a channel of information.

This channel contains titles, descriptions, dates, content, authors, etc that lead back to the original information.

The RSS document is made available on a web server and can be pulled down by an RSS reader (sometimes called an aggregator).

A device server with web server capabilities is therefore able to create an RSS information channel, also known as an "RSS feed", to deliver device information to the user.

The simplified gathering of data makes it possible for users to make correlations with the information gathered.

Just as it is used to aggregate news articles, a device "blog" or a device server-based web log can provide a feed to its content by producing an RSS document available via a well-known URL.

The result is much more powerful than simple e-mail alerts, and in this way, adds intelligence to the networked device.

As the possibilities for using RSS abound, companies are incorporating its functionality more and more.

For instance, Microsoft's Internet Explorer version 7.0 includes a built-in RSS reader.

Other browsers such as Mozilla's Firefox and Opera already offer RSS as a standard feature.

And, for those not looking to make a software upgrade anytime soon, many powerful and easy to use stand-alone RSS readers are also available.

It is important to note that RSS is a format based on XML and in an embedded environment, XML/RSS is a valuable capability.

Together, they provide a more flexible and effective way to transfer information in a human-readable, human-useable form and for machine-to-machine communication that can distribute business logic to a variety of systems.

Devices can easily provide the ability to have their information retrieved by RSS aggregators or available in other custom XML.

Examples exist in a variety of business situations, such as the following.

In a factory, readings can be read by an RSS aggregator and pushed to a manager for monitor and control.

In an office security system, XML can be sent to a database for storage and to an application so that the application can automatically make the decision whether to call the police or fire department.

In an office, if the office manager needs data, they can use RSS to retrieve it.

Their aggregator can collect the RSS feeds from any number of different offices or remote locations and use the one RSS aggregator to check the open/close status on all doors.

For mailing services such as UPS, XML can be used to transmit the status of a package to a corporate data system and RSS can be implemented to feed the package data to the end customer.

Integrating XML and RSS into an embedded design can be challenging for designers who are not familiar with them.

It is imperative to understand the basics of implementing the two formats before attempting integration.

The first thing to understand is that data can be dynamically generated by the embedded firmware.

This data is wrapped on the fly into the RSS format (or "custom" XML format).

It is sent over an appropriate transport mechanism making the device an automated "blogger".

In addition, static data can be created as a file on an embedded file system and similarly sent as the dynamic data described previously.

Currently, there are integrated solutions being developed that allow embedded designers to quickly and easily add these functions and capabilities to their applications.

Such solutions eliminate guess work on the part of the designer and facilitate a faster design cycle.

A sample application illustrates using RSS and XML in a security device panel device that unlocks a door for people with a proper key card.

The device keeps a list of log events, each of which contain a timestamp when this event occurred, who tried to open the door, and if access was "granted" or "denied" access.

These log events could either be contained in a file on the device's file system or kept as a list within RAM.

Either way the firmware has a mechanism for iterating though the entire list of log events.

For the RSS feed of the log events, there will exist a CGI- based web application running within the HTTP server on the device.

This application will be accessible via a well-known URL on the device.

For example, the URL device_ip_address/index.rss could execute the RSS generator on the device which dynamically creates the RSS page and sends it back to the client (ie RSS aggregator).

An RSS aggregator is configured to get the RSS feed from the device and then parse the data in an easy-to-read format for the user.

In most cases, RSS aggregators present feeds like e-mail clients present mailboxes.

Likewise, instead of using an RSS feed to expose the event log, custom XML could be used.

The XML data could be pushed or pulled from the device using FTP, TFTP, HTTP, Telnet, e-mail etc With custom XML, more than likely, you'll implement a back-end program or script that would parse the data, interpret it, and do something useful.

In this case, an example might be to send an e-mail to the office manager saying that access was denied to Eric Davis.

All the major programming languages have very nice and easy to use XML libraries allowing you to manipulate and parse any kind of XML formatted data.

Whatever you might want to embed within XML and what you do with the data is endless.

We can truly say that the sky's the limit.

XML and RSS are powerful tools for use in a diverse set of applications.

Undoubtedly useful, especially when utilised together, XML and RSS can add substantial value in a variety of applications, including, but not limited to, factory automation, health care and a growing machine-to-machine (M2M) segment.

The convergence of machine information with enterprise business processes is expected to transform the way companies deliver service in the future.

This M2M integration adds tremendous value by enhancing processes such as work flow improvement, asset tracking, customer service and product maintenance in a wide variety of vertical markets including industrial and building automation, security, medical, financial, energy metering and point-of-sale applications.

As more and more users need to access data at an enterprise level from a multitude of devices, we can expect that XML and RSS will become increasingly ingrained into business IT structures stretching all the way to edge devices to deliver on the promise of the "real time" enterprise.

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