OBIX - Scope

Scope

oBIX provides a publicly available web services interface specification that can be used to obtain data in a simple and secure manner from HVAC, access control, utilities, and other building automation systems, and to provide data exchange between facility systems and enterprise applications. Release 1 provides a normalized representation for three of elements common to control systems:

• Points: representing a single scalar value and its status – typically these map to sensors, actuators, or configuration variables like a setpoint.

• Alarming: modeling, routing, and acknowledgment of alarms. Alarms indicate a condition which requires notification of either a user or another application.

• 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.

oBIX 1.0 provides a low level object model which can be extended during implementation. While points are directly addressable (and thereby settable), direct interaction with the points requires too much knowledge of the underlying control system for the enterprise developer. The underlying points can be aggregated, the results named, alarm levels set, and histories begun using the oBIX contract. If oBIX exposes a low level object model for control systems, oBIX contracts create the higher level type libraries that most programmers actually want to work with.