The Industrial Internet Consortium launched May 27 its IIC IoT Patterns Initiative to crowdsource, review, revise and publish a library of high-quality and well-reasoned IoT patterns for use and reuse across industries. A pattern describes a recurring design or architectural problem in a specific context, and offers an established scheme for solving it. IoT patterns include architectural designs to represent essential, cohesive components and their assembly, and design patterns that illustrate solutions to specific problems.
"Patterns capture and condense teachings from developer and system architect experiences that others can use to tackle new problems," says François Ozog, director of the Edge and Fog Computing Group at Linaro, and co-chair of the IIC Patterns Task Group. "The IIC is also developing application notes to describe how to use patterns effectively in various contexts and to help identify the best patterns for solutions."
Use-cases describe various perspectives of a system based on user roles by defining user requirements and identifying essential functions. "Many patterns are technical," adds Daniel Burkhardt, doctoral student at Ferdinand-Steinbeis-Institut, and co-chair of the IIC Patterns Task Group. "But, by focusing on end-user concerns and requirements, developers and system architects will use patterns effectively, and solution designs will improve."
IIoT developers and system architects can access the IIC IoT Patterns repository on the IIC Resource Hub. Developers can also join the IIC Community Forum to discuss patterns. Workshops to educate the IIoT developer community will follow. For more information about the IIC IoT Patterns Initiative, read its blog at https://blog.iiconsortium.org/2021/05/patterns-collection-initiative-with-the-industrial-internet-consortium.html.