W3C

– DRAFT –
WoT and NGSI-LD

10 March 2025

Attendees

Present
Dave_Raggett, Franck_LE_GALL, Frederic_LE, Kaz_Ashimura, Martin_Bauer, Michael_Koster, Michael_McCool
Regrets
-
Chair
McCool
Scribe
mjk

Meeting minutes

Minutes review

<kaz> Mar-3

McCool: working on use cases

Martin: also working on use cases

McCool: any objection to publish?
… no objection, approved

Review Proposed Use Cases

McCool's Use Case

<kaz> PR 14 - Define Onboarding Use Case example

McCool: PR #14 Defining onboarding use case

McCool: this PR review can be used to agree on a template

McCool: (review the use case md document in the examples directory)

<kaz> rendered MD

McCool: the format includes a user story: as a (stakeholder) I need (a feature) so that I can (do something of value) , in other words who-what-why
… also includes a section for design alternatives and a section for applications

McCool: (refactoring the document headings)
… how does it look now?

Martin: looks OK

<kaz> updated MD

McCool: (explain the use case)

McCool: how can we import TDs and use them?
… the primary use case is to describe devices and services
… TDs are linked data; it's important to re-export TDs (northbound API)
… We will use TDs to onboard devices
… there are 3 options here
… one is direct graph extension, what is the root of the extended graph?
… another option is to translate TDs into a more suitable format for the graph
… yet another option is through RDF annotation of the TD for connecting the TD to the graph as properties of nodes - similar to option one

McCool: ... an example use case is getting real time data from a temperature sensor in a lake
… are there any changes or additions we should make?

Martin: the template is fine, the detailed assumptions need further review and discussion
… we need to look at options 1 and 3 for potential mismatch

McCool: there are some details we need to prepare detailed examples

Martin: the question is how NGSI-LD and TD relate, where NGSI-LD is a description of the thing (the lake) and the temperature (a property) and the TD could be used as a method for obtaining the value of the property
… we can't just add arbitrary RDF to the graph, so TDs are not a good fit like option one
… Option 3 needs some working out
… maybe there is a conceptual problem with the use case

Martin: what is a thing and what is a Thing Description?

McCool: physical things and software services can be Things in WoT

Martin: how do we then map that into the NGSI-LD world

McCool: there can be non-device entities in NGSI-LD

Martin: maybe entities don't represent network devices

McCool: at the high level example, I want to locate a temperature value onto a map
… NGSI-LD and WoT do different things, and we want to bring them together, the question is how do they connect

Kaz: the discussion is a good direction, for further discussion we should determine what kind of devices and entities we are looking at, some specific entities and devices

Martin's Use Case

<kaz> Issue 15 - Use Case: Thing Description for Thing using NGSI-LD API

Martin: this use case is about the northbound API
… what would a TD look like to describe how to access the thing?

McCool: if you already have an affordance to an entity, the TD would describe how to use the affordance

Martin: need to construct an example TD, how do I map the NGSI-LD operations in the TD?
… how to use the HTTP binding with JSON-LD content
… We map Properties to NGSI-LD Attributes
… there is an issue in that the API currently returns an entire set of Attributes
… We always send full JSON-LD documents in responses
… There may be a Patch interface possible

McCool: another option (2 above) would define a whole new API to mitigate the conceptual differences
… a layer to translate concepts

McCool: we should do a detailed design

Martin: not clear how links and relationships are used
… we don't have actions per se, use updates of Attributes
… looking into Service Execution, which is more easily mapped to TD Actions
… looking at how to make Service Execution more like TD Actions
… for Events, we have Subscriptions which may map to TD Events

McCool: Events and Actions are not described in detail in TD
… but we do have Profiles that can be used to refine the mechanisms

Kaz: suggest that we clarify what specifically, Entities, Things, Services, Applications, etc., is being mapped from NGSI-LD to TD

McCool: we are running out of time, so everyone add comments to the issue
… also add more use cases now that we have more of a template

McCool: The use cases should correspond to northbound and southbound API patterns

AOB

McCool: AOB?
… reminding that we are meeting every week except for some cancellations
… the time offset jumps back at the end of the month

McCool: Any other business?
… Adjourned

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 244 (Thu Feb 27 01:23:09 2025 UTC).