Internet of Things Architecture

such flexibility

Tactics Create extensible interfaces

Apply design techniques that facilitate change

Apply metamodel-based architectural styles

Build variation points into the software

Use standard extension points

Table 18 : Tactics addressing evolution and interoperability.

Both, the Reference Model and the Reference Architecture are built to be
extensible and to enable interoperability between Devices and Services.
Therefore the activities listed in Section 4.3.1 reflect the IoT-A approach in
detail:

 Characterize the evolution needs: IoT-A has collected stakeholder and

also internal requirements reflecting the actual and future needs in IoT

systems, see [IoT-A UNIs];

 Assess the current ease of evolution: Also through the stakeholder

workshops and in addition the use cases from WP7 and the state of the

art analysis from WP1 and all technical work packages, the current

status was collected;

 Consider the evolution trade-offs: The evolution trade-offs are heavily

domain- and application-specific and are not part of the IoT-A work.

Those trade-offs must of course be discussed when creating an

architecture for a concrete application;

 Rework the architecture: The main result of IoT-A are the Reference

Model and the Reference Architecture which were designed with

interoperability in focus, see Sections 3.5 and 4.

Moreover, Rozanski & Woods [Rozanski 2011] also introduce tactics to deal
with interoperability and evolution. Here also the IoT Reference Model and
Reference Architecture adapt the following tactics:

 Create extensible interfaces, Apply design techniques that facilitate

change: IoT-A defines common entities, e.g. the IoT Domain Model, see

Section 3.3, and entry points, e.g. the Communication Model, see

Section 3.6, which can be used to create IoT-A compliant systems;

 Apply metamodel-based architectural styles: The IoT Reference

Model and Reference Architecture define interoperability on architectural

level. Especially the Domain Model, see Section 3.3, and the Information

Model, see Section3.4 as metamodels are open for further extensions;