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The rapid transition from purely physical or purely virtual systems, as we know them, to increasingly interconnected cyber-physical systems with high integration of the Internet-of-Things demands a paradigm shift in the development of information systems-smart applications-for the planning and operation of these systems. To address the demand of managing the integration of connected devices and enabling new business models from the heavily interconnected systems, current architectural reference models were considered and components of each synthesized into a proposed software stack for smart application development. This work lends its implementation approach to the utility of graph theory in modeling complex systems, and implements a graph database for managing and maintaining connected components that emphasize each component’s virtual and physical connectivity, technical functionalities, and state. The graph database microservice is then integrated with a highly available web framework and communication broker service in a multi-layered software framework to integrate Internet-of-Things devices and make services available over the web. The framework’s-and respective components’-feasibility and utility is demonstrated through a use case for modeling, connecting, and controlling interconnected homes in a modern smart grid, and abstracting transactional device data for new business models, such as demand response ancillary services.
Smidt et al. (Mon,) studied this question.