C.4 Virtual Entity (VE)
C.4.1 Functional Components
Virtual-Entity (VE) Resolution
Description The VE Resolution is the FC which provides the functionalities
to the IoT User to retrieve associations between VEs and IoT
Services.
The association contains all relevant information for the
association between a Virtual Entity and an IoT Service. First,
this is information about the Virtual Entity, at least its identifier
and type, but possibly also its location and further information.
Second, this is the service identifier of the IoT Service and
finally it is information that relates the Virtual Entity to the IoT
Service, i.e. the name and type of the attribute describing the
aspect of the Virtual Entity to which the service functionality
pertains, the type of service (providing information or enabling
actuation), and possibly further information.The actual information contained and the representation of
associations is a design decision, which is on purpose not
taken at the level of the Reference Architecture. An example
modelling an association can be found in D4.3 in Section 2.1.4
[De 2012].The functionalities needed by the requesting party in brief are:Discovery functionality discovers the associations without any
prior knowledge about the VE. The VE specification and the
VEServiceSpecification, which describes the relation between
the VE and the IoT Service, are used as parameters of the
query.The VE specification contains all information about the VE part
of the specification, e.g. type and location. The VE Service
Specification contains information regarding the relation of the
VE to the IoT Service, e.g. the name of the VE attribute and
the type of service.Look-up is a functionality which enables the User to access
Associations between the particular VE and IoT Services fitting
the VEServiceSpecification based on a known VE-ID uniquely
identifying a VE. Finally, functionalities for managing
associations are supported.Additional The component is described in detail in deliverable D4.3 in