* Menu * Subscribe/order back issues * Back issues online * About ERCIM News * Call for the next issue * Advertise * ERCIM web site View other issues ERCIM News 104 ERCIM News 104 ERCIM News 103 ERCIM News 102 ERCIM News 101 ERCIM News 100 ERCIM News 99 ERCIM News 98 ERCIM News 97 ERCIM News 96 ERCIM News 95 ERCIM News 94 ERCIM News 93 ERCIM News 92 ERCIM News 91 ERCIM News 90 ERCIM News 89 ERCIM News 88 ERCIM News 87 ERCIM News 86 ERCIM News 85 ERCIM News 84 ERCIM News 83 ERCIM News 82 ERCIM News 81 ERCIM News 80 ERCIM News 79 ERCIM News 78 ERCIM News 77 ERCIM News 76 ERCIM News 75 ERCIM News 74 ERCIM News 73 ERCIM News 72 ERCIM News 71 ERCIM News 70 ERCIM News 69 ERCIM News 68 ERCIM News 67 Contents: ERCIM News 101 * Keynote * Special Theme o The Promise of the Internet of Things and the Web of Things - Introduction to the Special Theme o Open{WSN|Mote}: Open-Source Industrial IoT o RIOT and the Evolution of IoT Operating Systems and Applications o FIT IoT-LAB: The Largest IoT Open Experimental Testbed o OCARI: A Wireless Sensor Network for Industrial Environments o Security and Privacy in the Internet of Things o Secure and Efficient Wireless Sensor Networks o Creating Internet of Things Applications from Building Blocks o Interfaces to the Internet of Things with XForms o Home Automation Devices Belong to the IoT World o Dioptase: Data Streaming Middleware for the Internet of Things o Programming Actors for the Internet of Things o A Mobile End-User Development Environment for IoT Applications Exploiting the Puzzle Metaphor o 3D Web Visualization for Real-Time Maintenance of Smart Buildings o COMPOSE: An Open Source Cloud-Based Scalable IoT Services Platform o An Integration Gateway for Sensing Devices in Smart Environments o Fighting Networking Heterogeneity in the Internet of Things o Tectons: Towards a Generalised Approach to Programming Systems of Systems o BETaaS: Building the Future Platform for Development and Execution of Machine-to-Machine Applications o Pro-IoT: Improving the Productivity of Companies by Using the IoT o MusicBricks: Connecting Digital Creators to the Internet of Music Things o Deploying an NFC-based Inventory System: A Case Study o TrakChain Estimates Costs for Track and Trace in the Internet of (many) Things * Joint ERCIM Actions o The Role of ERCIM EEIG o W3C Europe@20 Anniversary Event * Research and Innovation o From Cooling Integrated Circuits to Efficient Electrical Power Generation o Icing Detection and Protection for Small Unmanned Aircrafts o LEARNMINER – Advanced Analytics for eLearning o Mesh Joinery: A Method for Building Fabricable Structures o Online Semantic Analysis over Big Network Data o VAVID– Handling Big Data * In Brief o 25 Years of Python at CWI o Java Bug Fixed with Formal Methods o MOOC on “Binaural Hearing for Robots” Image ERCIM News 101 cover page *ERCIM News 101* April 2015 Special theme: *The Internet of Things and the Web of Things* /Guest editors/: - Dave Raggett, W3C - Emmanuel Baccelli, Inria, France This issue in pdf (56 pages) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ERCIM News 101 -- Peter Kunz Read now issuu is the world's largest collection of free-to-read publications including magazines, newspapers, portfolios, and catalogs. You can publish too. Open publication - Free publishing ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Image ERCIM News 101 epub This issue in ePub format Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest *Next issue* April 2016 *Next special theme:* Planning and Logistics Call for the next issue ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Get the latest issue to your desktop RSS Feed Interfaces to the Internet of Things with XForms Details Category: Special Theme by Steven Pemberton XForms is a language for describing interfaces to data, designed at W3C by researchers from industry and academia. It is a declarative language, meaning it describes what has to be done, but largely not how. The interface it describes does not have to run locally on the machine producing the data, but can be run remotely over the network. Since Internet of Things (IoT) computers typically have little memory and are low-powered, this makes XForms ideally suited for the task. One of the unexpected successes of HTML was its adoption for controlling devices with embedded computers, such as home Wi-Fi routers. To make an adjustment to such a device, the user directs the browser to the IP address from which it is running and a small web server on the device serves up web pages that allow the user to fill in and submit values to change the working of the device. However, the tiny embedded computers that form part of the IoT typically have memory in kilobytes, not megabytes, and lack the power to run a web server that can serve and interpret web pages. This calls for a different approach. One approach is for the devices to serve up only the data of the parameters, so that those values can then be injected into an interface served from elsewhere. XForms [1], a standard that we have helped develop at W3C, is designed for exactly this type of scenario: although it is a technology originally designed for improving the handling of forms on the web, it has since been generalised to more general applications; version 2.0 is currently in preparation [2]. XForms has two essential parts: the first part is the model that specifies details of the data being collected, where it comes from, its structure, and constraints. It allows data from several sources to be combined, and data to be submitted to different places. It also ensures that as data is changed, that relationships between the data are kept up to date. The second part is the user interface that displays values and specifies controls for changing the values. These controls are specified in a device-independent manner that only describes what they are meant to achieve, not how to do it. This makes it easier to adapt the interface to different devices, screen sizes, etc., while still allowing the use of specific interfaces, such as radio buttons, via style sheets. XForms has already been used for a number of years to control devices in this way at many petrol stations in the USA. Each device, storage tanks, petrol pumps, cash registers, and so on, contains a simple server that delivers its data as XML instances. XForms interfaces are then used to read and combine these values, and update control values (for instance the price of fuel being displayed on pumps). As an example of how it could be used, Nest, a well-known producer of internet thermostats, has published the data-model interface to its devices. A simple interface to this could look like this: The following device-independent user interface control specifies that a single value is to be selected from the list of items, without specifying how that is to be achieved (using radio buttons, drop-downs or whatever): Experience with XForms has shown that using it can reduce production time and costs by a factor of ten. As an example, one very large pilot project reduced production time from five years with thirty people to a single year with ten people. These remarkable savings are due largely to the declarative nature of XForms, which greatly reduces the administrative programming needed. Several implementations of XForms are available, at least three of which are open-source. It is also part of the Open Document Format, implemented by Open Office and Libre Office. There is also a tutorial [3]. *Link:* Nest API Reference: https://developer.nest.com/documentation/api-reference *References:* [1] J. M Boyer (ed.), XForms 1.1, W3C, 2009, http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/REC-xforms-20091020/ [2] J. M. Boyer et al. (eds.), XForms 2.0, W3C, 2015, http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/wiki/XForms_2.0 [3] Steven Pemberton, XForms for HTML Authors, W3C, 2010, http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/2010/xforms11-for-html-authors *Please contact:* Steven Pemberton Chair of the W3C XForms WG, CWI, The Netherlands E-mail: steven.pemberton@cwi.nl