FairCom Edge

Internet of Things (IoT) uses Internet protocols to connect things to software. Things include devices, equipment, appliances, vehicles, and so forth.

Each thing must contain an embedded computer processor and must use an IoT protocol, such as MQTT, to communicate with software.

Since 2014, MQTT has become the standard Internet protocol for IoT. MQTT is necessary because devices need to push information when it is created, such as a status update, an alert, telemetry, or a command. MQTT is used in IoT because HTTP is a request/response protocol that cannot push information.

The JSON Action Protocol (jsonAction) is like REST, jsonAction is a standard way of using JSON to execute actions on remote computers by sending a JSON Action request to a server and receiving back a JSON response. All information needed in a request and its response is included in the JSON. This allows jsonAction to work over any protocol including HTTP, HTTPS, WS, WSS, MQTT, MQTTS, etc.

jsonAction improves on REST by putting all request information in JSON. In contrast, REST spreads request information across a URL, query string, HTTP header, HTTP verb, and HTTP payload. Similarly, jsonAction puts all response information in JSON, whereas REST spreads response information across the HTTP header and HTTP payload. Lastly, REST only works over HTTP whereas, jsonAction works over any protocol including asynchronous protocols.

The JSON MQ API configures and manage FairCom's MQTT broker. It is available in FairCom Edge and FairCom MQ.

This API is part of FairCom's family of JSON APIs.

The JSON DB API uses JSON over HTTP to manage databases, tables, indexes, records, queries, cursors, and transactions. It is available in all FairCom products.

This API is part of FairCom's family of JSON APIs.

Structured Query Language (SQL) is a standardized programming language that is used to manage relational databases and perform various operations on the data in them.

FairCom's SQL engine is ANSI compliant and has almost all SQL features up through the SQL:2003 standard.

Advanced C Engineering APIs (ACE APIs) include FairCom's ISAM, CTDB, and Low-level ACE API.

Each of these APIs use the Record Buffer Method for processing data at high speed with high efficiency. ACE APIs are ideal for C and C++ because these languages are designed to work with record buffers. Higher-level languages, such as Java and C#, can also use these APIs with almost the same efficiency as C or C++.

An MQTT broker is a server that implements one or more of the four MQTT protocols. One or more MQTT clients can connect to the broker to publish messages to topics and they can subscribe to topics to receive published messages. The broker provides quality of service guarantees for message delivery.

Message Queueing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is the Internet standard protocol for publishing and subscribing to messages that are sent to topics on an MQTT broker (see MQTT.org for more information).

MQTT 3.1.1 is one of the four MQTT Protocols. As of 2022, it is the most commonly used by MQTT Clients. It is adequate for most applications and supported by all major MQTT brokers. In the MQTT wire protocol, it is identified as MQTT version 4.

There are currently four MQTT specifications – one for each of the four versions of the protocol: MQTT 3.1, MQTT 3.1.1, MQTT 5, and MQTT-SN v1.2.

MQTT 5 is one of the four MQTT Protocols. As of 2022, it is the most advanced MQTT protocol available to MQTT clients and MQTT brokers. MQTT 5 is supported by many MQTT Clients and MQTT brokers.

It provides advanced features, such as a shared message subscription, which is useful for distributing messages across subscribers for parallel processing. For example, an MQTT broker takes each message published to a shared topic and sends it to a different subscriber. In contrast, a normal subscription receives all messages published to a topic.

Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA) is a machine-to-machine communication protocol for industrial automation. OPC UA is the latest, easiest, and most robust protocol from the OPC Foundation.

The FairCom Edgeprovides a connector to OPC UA to bridge data from OPC UA devices to other protocols, including MQTT, JSON, and SQL.

Modbus is a binary server/client communication protocol developed and published by Modicon for transmitting data to and from electronic devices over a serial bus or TCP/IP network.

JSON APIs are FairCom's family of APIs that use jsonAction to interact with a FairCom server. They are optimized for client server computing and ease of use in all programming languages. They provide maximum data flexibility.

An IT connector uses IT protocols to connect software, such as applications, databases, and middleware.

FairCom Edge provides ODBC and JDBC for connecting to enterprise SQL databases, such as Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, and so forth.

FairCom Edgeprovides REST and JSON for connecting to enterprise software, such as applications, APIs, web services, microservices, etc.

FairCom Edgeprovides MQTT for connecting to message-oriented middleware including MQTT message brokers, AMQP message brokers, and classic MQ solutions, such as IBM MQ.

Cloud is also known as Cloud Computing. The cloud is a centralized location on the Internet hosted by a cloud provider, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, etc. In contrast, the edge is any location that is not the cloud.

An enriching transform is one of the primary forms of transforms. It combines data from multiples sources to create more valuable data — for example, looking up data in a database to add new properties to a JSON document or running a machine learning algorithm on the data in a JSON document to classify it and storing the results in the document.

Other types of transforms include reformatting transform and reshaping transform.

Reshaping transform is one of the primary forms of Data Transforms that changes how the data is organized — for example, converting deeply nested data in an object into a flat set of properties in a record.

Other types of transforms include reformatting transform and enriching transform.

Reformatting transform is one of the primary forms of Data Transforms that changes how the data is stored as bit and bytes — for example, reformatting a binary BSON document to a textual JSON document.

Other types of transforms include reshaping transform and enriching transform.