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Thing-to-Thing Data Hub
draft-hartke-t2trg-data-hub-02

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Author Klaus Hartke
Last updated 2018-10-22
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draft-hartke-t2trg-data-hub-02
Thing-to-Thing Research Group                                  K. Hartke
Internet-Draft                                                  Ericsson
Intended status: Experimental                           October 22, 2018
Expires: April 25, 2019

                        Thing-to-Thing Data Hub
                     draft-hartke-t2trg-data-hub-02

Abstract

   The Thing-to-Thing Data Hub is a RESTful, hypermedia-driven Web
   application that can be used in Thing-to-Thing communications to
   share data items such as thing descriptions, configurations, resource
   descriptions, or firmware updates at a central location.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
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   Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
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   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on April 25, 2019.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2018 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  Requirements Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Data Model  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  Interaction Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   5.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   6.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     6.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     6.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   Appendix A.  Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     A.1.  CoAP Publish-Subscribe  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     A.2.  CoRE Resource Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11

1.  Introduction

   In Thing-to-Thing communication, there is often a need to share data
   items of common interest at a central location.  For example, the
   CoRE Resource Directory [I-D.ietf-core-resource-directory] aggregates
   descriptions of resources held on other servers, which enables Things
   to easily discover these resources.  Similarly, a W3C Web-of-Things
   Thing Description Repository [WOT] stores semantic metadata of Things
   as well as functional descriptions of their interfaces, making this
   data available to Web dashboards, commissioning tools and other
   things.

   As more and more Thing-to-Thing applications are implemented, it
   becomes increasingly important to be able to share not only resource
   and Thing descriptions but also many other kinds of data, such as
   default configurations for new devices, service locations, firmware
   updates, or certificate revocation lists.  The existing resource
   directories and Thing description repositories are not a good fit for
   these kinds of data, as they're specialized to their use cases and
   don't accept any other kinds of data.  Creating a new, specialized
   application for each use case is not practical in the long term.

   This document defines a simple "data hub" application, a RESTful Web
   application with a hypermedia API that is suitable for constrained
   environments and that generalizes the concept of a central repository
   to sharing any kinds of data.  A data hub enables clients to share
   data items in any format and provides means for creating, reading,
   observing, updating, deleting, and finding data items at a data hub
   server.

   Data hubs are intended to be used primarily with CoAP [RFC7252].

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   Features:

   o  General

      The data hub generalizes the concept of a directory or repository
      to data items of any Internet media type.  This means applications
      using the data hub aren't stuck forever with the same media types
      or limited to resource descriptions and Thing descriptions.

   o  Searchable

      Clients can retrieve a subset of data items from a data hub based
      on item metadata.

   o  Observable

      Data items published to a data hub are exposed as resources.  As
      such, they can be observed for changes [RFC7641].  This allows
      clients to stay informed of information that other clients update
      over time.  As a result, the data hub functions similar to a CoAP
      Publish-Subscribe Broker [I-D.ietf-core-coap-pubsub], although
      this isn't its primary use case.

   o  Evolvable

      The key differentiator of the data hub compared to CoRE Resource
      Directory and CoAP Publish-Subscribe Broker is the evolvability --
      the ability to respond effectively to the need for changes without
      negatively impacting existing and new clients.  Data hubs enable
      fine-grained evolvability by driving all interactions by machine-
      readable hypermedia elements.  Features can be added, changed or
      removed in a safe, backwards-compatible way simply by updating the
      data hub representation to expose appropriate links and forms.

1.1.  Requirements Notation

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
   [RFC2119].

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2.  Data Model

   The data model consists of three elements: the _data hub_, a
   _data collection_, and a number of shared _data items_ (Figure 1).

                                  Data Hub
             +-----------------------------------------------+
             |                 ___                           |
             |          Data  /   \                          |
             |    Collection  \___/                          |
             |                  |         ___                |
             |                  |________/   \  Data Item    |
             |                  |        \___/               |
             |                  |         ___                |
             |                  |________/   \  Data Item    |
             |                  |        \___/               |
             |                  |                   .        |
             |                  |                   .        |
             |                  |                   .        |
             |                  |         ___                |
             |                  |________/   \  Data Item    |
             |                           \___/               |
             |                                               |
             +-----------------------------------------------+

   Figure 1: A Data Collection with a Number of Shared Data Items Hosted
                               at a Data Hub

   Data Hub

      A data hub is a Web application running at a Web server.  It hosts
      the data collection and the data items.

   Data Collection

      A data collection is a collection resource that contains the data
      items.

      Representations of data collections MUST have the "application/
      coral+cbor" or "text/coral" media type [I-D.hartke-t2trg-coral].
      They primarily consist of links to the data items using the "item"
      link relation type [RFC6573].  To reduce the number of round-
      trips, they MAY also embed (complete or partial) representations
      of the data items.  Forms contained in the representation enable
      interactions with the collection and the data items, as described
      in the following section.  The representations MAY additionally
      contain other links and forms that are not described in this
      document, such as a link with the "alternate" link relation type

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      that references an alternate representation of the data collection
      resource.

      For a start, a data hub is defined to have a depth of only one
      level; i.e., all data item resources are organized directly under
      the top-level data collection resource.  This could be extended to
      multiple levels in a future revision of this document.

   Data Item

      A data item is a resource that is a member of the data collection
      resource.

      Data item representations MAY have any media type.  However, a
      data collection MAY restrict the media types it accepts for
      publication.  In this case, the form in the data collection
      representation for creating data items MUST list the acceptable
      media types using form fields with name <urn:TBD#accept>.

      The representations of the data items MAY link back to the data
      collection resource using the "collection" link relation type
      [RFC6573].

3.  Interaction Model

   The interaction model consists of eight possible interactions with a
   data collection: discovering and reading the data collection, and
   creating, reading, observing, updating, deleting, and finding shared
   data items in the data collection.

   Discovering a Data Hub

      For a start, this revision of the document assumes that clients
      are pre-configured with a link to a data collection at some data
      hub.

   Reading a Collection

      A client can retrieve a representation of a data collection by
      following the pre-configured link.  The representation of the data
      collection includes links to (and, optionally, representations of)
      the data items in the data collection.  The representation of the
      data collection also includes forms for creating, updating,
      deleting, and finding data items.

   Creating an Item

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      The representation of a data collection MAY contain a form with
      the <urn:TBD#create> form relation type.  Submitting this form
      with a representation in one of the acceptable media types creates
      a new data item in the data collection.  The acceptable media
      types are indicated by <urn:TBD#accept> form fields.

      Data hubs implementing this specification MUST offer the POST
      method [RFC7252] in this form.  The location of the created data
      item is conveyed in the 2.01 (Created) response by the Location-
      Path and Location-Query options [RFC7252].

   Reading an Item

      A client can retrieve a representation of a data item by following
      a link with the <http://www.iana.org/assignments/relation/item>
      link relation type in the data collection representation.

   Observing an Item

      A client can observe a data item by following a link with the
      <http://www.iana.org/assignments/relation/item> link relation type
      in the data collection representation and observing the target
      resource as specified in RFC 7641 [RFC7641].

   Updating an Item

      For each data item in a data collection, the representation of the
      data collection MAY include a nested form with the
      <urn:TBD#update> form relation type.  Submitting this form updates
      the data item to the submitted representation.

      Data hubs implementing this specification MUST offer the PUT
      method [RFC7252] in this form.

   Deleting an Item

      For each data item in a data collection, the representation of the
      data collection MAY include a nested form with the
      <urn:TBD#delete> form relation type.  Submitting this form deletes
      the data item from the data collection.

      Data hubs implementing this specification MUST offer the DELETE
      method [RFC7252] in this form.

   Searching for Items

      The representation of a data collection MAY contain a form with
      the <urn:TBD#search> form relation type.  This form can be used to

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      find data items in the data collection.  Submitting this form with
      a search query returns the subset of data items that match the
      query.

      Data hubs implementing this specification MUST offer the FETCH
      method [RFC8132] in this form.

4.  Security Considerations

   TODO.

5.  IANA Considerations

   This document has no IANA actions.

6.  References

6.1.  Normative References

   [I-D.hartke-t2trg-coral]
              Hartke, K., "The Constrained RESTful Application Language
              (CoRAL)", draft-hartke-t2trg-coral-06 (work in progress),
              October 2018.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC6573]  Amundsen, M., "The Item and Collection Link Relations",
              RFC 6573, DOI 10.17487/RFC6573, April 2012,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6573>.

   [RFC7252]  Shelby, Z., Hartke, K., and C. Bormann, "The Constrained
              Application Protocol (CoAP)", RFC 7252,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7252, June 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7252>.

   [RFC7641]  Hartke, K., "Observing Resources in the Constrained
              Application Protocol (CoAP)", RFC 7641,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7641, September 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7641>.

   [RFC8132]  van der Stok, P., Bormann, C., and A. Sehgal, "PATCH and
              FETCH Methods for the Constrained Application Protocol
              (CoAP)", RFC 8132, DOI 10.17487/RFC8132, April 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8132>.

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6.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-core-coap-pubsub]
              Koster, M., Keranen, A., and J. Jimenez, "Publish-
              Subscribe Broker for the Constrained Application Protocol
              (CoAP)", draft-ietf-core-coap-pubsub-05 (work in
              progress), July 2018.

   [I-D.ietf-core-resource-directory]
              Shelby, Z., Koster, M., Bormann, C., Stok, P., and C.
              Amsuess, "CoRE Resource Directory", draft-ietf-core-
              resource-directory-15 (work in progress), October 2018.

   [RFC6690]  Shelby, Z., "Constrained RESTful Environments (CoRE) Link
              Format", RFC 6690, DOI 10.17487/RFC6690, August 2012,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6690>.

   [WOT]      Kovatsch, M., Ed. and D. Peintner, Ed., "WoT Current
              Practices", February 2018, <http://w3c.github.io/wot/
              current-practices/wot-practices.html>.

Appendix A.  Related Work

   The data hub is an instance of the well-known collection pattern.  As
   such, it might be used in places where a more specialized instance of
   the collection pattern is currently used, such as the CoAP Publish-
   Subscribe Broker [I-D.ietf-core-coap-pubsub] or the CoRE Resource
   Directory [I-D.ietf-core-resource-directory].  This section shows how
   these two applications might be implemented with a data hub (without
   trying to replicate all of their features in detail).

A.1.  CoAP Publish-Subscribe

   CoAP Publish-Subscribe [I-D.ietf-core-coap-pubsub] provides means for
   resource-constrained sensor and actuator nodes to publish and receive
   data without having to be available at the same time.  The basic
   operation involves clients called "publishers" updating "topic"
   resources at a server called the "broker" and clients called
   "subscribers" observing these resources (Figure 2).

       ____________            ____________            ____________
      |            |---------.|            |          |            |
      |  Publisher |<--------'|   Broker   |          | Subscriber |
      |  (Client)  |          |  (Server)  |.---------|  (Client)  |
      |____________|          |____________|'-------->|____________|

                     Figure 2: CoAP Publish-Subscribe

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   A broker might be implemented as a data hub by creating the topics as
   resources on the data hub server and linking to these from the data
   collection resource (Figure 3).  Hypermedia controls in the data
   collection representation enable publishers to create, update, and
   delete topics as well as subscribers to read or observe these topics.

                                 Data Hub
                    +--------------------------------+
                    |     ___                        |
                    |    /   \ Data Collection       |
                    |    \___/                       |
                    |      |         ___             |
                    |      |________/   \ Topic A    |
                    |      |        \___/            |
                    |      |         ___             |
                    |      |________/   \ Topic B    |
                    |      |        \___/            |
                    |      |         ___             |
                    |      |________/   \ Topic C    |
                    |               \___/            |
                    |                                |
                    +--------------------------------+

         Figure 3: A Data Hub Acting as a Publish-Subscribe Broker

                +-------------+--------------------------+
                | Interaction | Mapped to                |
                +-------------+--------------------------+
                | DISCOVERY   | Discovering a Data Hub / |
                |             | Reading a Collection /   |
                |             | Searching for Items      |
                | CREATE      | Creating an Item         |
                | PUBLISH     | Updating an Item         |
                | SUBSCRIBE   | Observing an Item        |
                | UNSUBSCRIBE | Observing an Item        |
                | READ        | Reading an Item          |
                | REMOVE      | Deleting an Item         |
                +-------------+--------------------------+

           Table 1: Mapping of Pub/Sub Interactions to Data Hub

A.2.  CoRE Resource Directory

   A CoRE Resource Directory [I-D.ietf-core-resource-directory] hosts
   descriptions of resources held on other servers, allowing lookups to
   be performed for those descriptions.  The descriptions are encoded as
   links in CoRE Link Format [RFC6690].  The links are annotated with a

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   variety of link attributes providing the type of and hints about the
   linked resources.

                   Data Hub
    +-------------------------------------+
    |     ___                             |
    |    /   \ Data Collection            |
    |    \___/                            |
    |      |         ___                  |
    |      |________/   \ Data Item in    |    +----------------------+
    |      |        \___/ Link Format     |    |     ___              |
    |      |          |___________________|____|____/   \ Resource    |
    |      |          |                   |    |    \___/             |
    |      |          |                   |    |     ___              |
    |      |          |___________________|____|____/   \ Resource    |
    |      |                              |    |    \___/             |
    |      |                              |    |                      |
    |      |         ___                  |    +----------------------+
    |      |________/   \ Data Item in    |    +----------------------+
    |               \___/ Link Format     |    |     ___              |
    |                 |___________________|____|____/   \ Resource    |
    |                                     |    |    \___/             |
    |                                     |    |                      |
    +-------------------------------------+    +----------------------+

              Figure 4: A Data Hub Storing Link Format Items

   A data hub might be used to store these resource descriptions.  Each
   resource description becomes a data item in a data collection
   (Figure 4).  A specialized interface for querying the cumulative set
   of stored links might be provided separately.

            +-----------------------+------------------------+
            | Interaction           | Mapped to              |
            +-----------------------+------------------------+
            | Discovery             | Discovering a Data Hub |
            | Registration          | Creating an Item       |
            | Registration Update   | -                      |
            | Registration Removal  | Deleting an Item       |
            | Read Endpoint Links   | Reading an Item        |
            | Update Endpoint Links | Updating an Item       |
            +-----------------------+------------------------+

      Table 2: Mapping of Resource Directory Interactions to Data Hub

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Acknowledgements

   Thanks to Christian Amsuess and Jaime Jimenez for helpful comments
   and discussions that have shaped the document.

Author's Address

   Klaus Hartke
   Ericsson
   Torshamnsgatan 23
   Stockholm  SE-16483
   Sweden

   Email: klaus.hartke@ericsson.com

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