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Ontology-Based Device Descriptions and Device Repository for Building Automation Devices

Abstract

Device descriptions play an important role in the design and commissioning of modern building automation systems and help reducing the design time and costs. However, all established device descriptions are specialized for certain purposes and suffer from several weaknesses. This hinders a further design automation, which is strongly needed for the more and more complex building automation systems. To overcome these problems, this paper presents novel Ontology-based Device Descriptions (ODDs) along with a layered ontology architecture, a specific ontology view approach with virtual properties, a generic access interface, a triple store-based database backend, and a generic search mask GUI with underlying query generation algorithm. It enables a formal, unified, and extensible specification of building automation devices, ensures their comparability, and facilitates a computer-enabled retrieval, selection, and interoperability evaluation, which is essential for an automated design. The scalability of the approach to several ten thousand devices is demonstrated.

1. Introduction

Modern and complex building automation systems consist of hundreds to several thousands of field and automation devices, like sensors, operating units, controllers, and actuators, and their complexity is still growing. Designing and commissioning such systems is a challenging, cost-intensive, and error-prone work, due to their complexity, variability, and heterogeneity.

A common practice for the system design is the usage of prefabricated off-the-shelf devices, which are manufactured and provided by specialized device manufacturers. They develop, produce, and market devices for specific applications (domain engineering) and hereby establish a continuously growing pool of market available devices. In the meantime, ten thousands of different off-the-shelf device types exist worldwide. To further reduce the design time, many devices are equipped with full-functioning software applications, which only need to be parameterized and commissioned, but not programmed from scratch.

On the other side, planners and system integrators realize a process called application engineering, which consists of selecting devices and composing them to the final building automation system. This demands a search and selection of suitable devices amongst the available, which together form a cost-optimal and stable-running system that matches all requirements. Depending on the specific automation domain, technology, and manufacturer, the devices are supplied with datasheets or specific electronic device descriptions. They describe their capabilities, installation, parameterization, and/or commissioning in various kinds of formats, ranging from natural language to ASCII- or XML-based specifications. Planners and system integrators are dependent on those descriptions and strongly challenged because of the many different description formats, their variability, specific focus on a certain usage (e.g., commissioning), and the lack of further necessary information.

Considering the growing complexity of building automation systems and the huge number of available field and automation devices, which cannot be handled by planners and system integrators anymore, the need for automatic design approaches arises. Novel design tools are required that enable an automatic or semiautomatic design of building automation systems to strongly reduce the design time and overall design costs. By considering all market available devices of all manufacturers, cost-optimized multivendor solutions can be developed automatically if regarded and solved as optimization problem [1].

Such automatic design approaches require electronic device descriptions, which satisfy the following requirements:

(i)formal, extensible, manufacturer-independent, and machine-readable specification format ensuring a unified specification of all devices and their comparability,

(ii)comprehensive specification of the hardware and software of devices, including their functionality and interoperability criteria,

(iii)computer-enabled retrieval of requirement-compliant devices and interoperability evaluation,

(iv)support of efficient and persistent database technology for handling large-device repositories.

However, as will be shown in Section 2, none of the existing and established device description formats supports all these criteria. This forced our development of the novel Ontology-based Device Descriptions (ODDs) and corresponding triple store-based database architecture that overcome the mentioned shortcomings and enable an automatic design [2]. Both will be described in this paper.

The main contributions of our work presented in this paper include the following: the ODDs based on an ontology layer architecture and incorporating a semantic specification model as explained in detail in Section 3; a new ontology view concept along with virtual ontology properties and generic data access mechanisms as presented in Section 4; a scalable device repository architecture using an RDF triple store to enable the storage of ODDs, together with a generic query generation architecture for a GUI-based device retrieval as described in Section 5. Additionally, Section 5 demonstrates the scalability of the device repository approach to several thousand devices, followed by Section 6 that finally concludes the paper.

2. State of the Art

In the industrial process and building automation domains, several device description formats exist and are established in practice. EDDL (Electronic Device Description Language) [3] is a device-description language for describing the operation and parameterization of HART, Foundation Fieldbus, and PROFIBUS field devices from process and industry automation. CANopen EDS (Electronic Datasheet) [4] describes the configuration and integration of CANopen nodes into networks by engineering tools and fulfills a similar purpose like EDDL but for CANopen. EDDL and CANopen EDS both are based on text files in ASCII format.

GSDML (Generic Station Description Markup Language) and FDCML (Field Device Markup Language) [5] on the contrary are device description languages based on XML. GSDML is primarily established in the Profinet I/O domain and is again used for the configuration and commissioning of systems by engineering tools. FDCML on the other hand is a metalanguage for describing automation devices from different views, such as communication, functionality, diagnosis and mechanics. Its primary usage is to provide (human-readable) product data sheets and to enable a tool-based commissioning. Its application mainly focuses on INTERBUS components. FDCML is flexible for extensions such as manufacturer-specific attributes, but which on the contrary inhibits the comparability of devices due to a nonuniform vocabulary.

The building automation domain also developed specific device descriptions, such as the ASCII file-based LonMark Device Interface (XIF) Files [6] or the binary EIB/KNX description files for the ETS engineering tool.

All device descriptions mentioned so far are primarily specializing in device commissioning, configuration, and testing. They are inadequate for a computer-enabled retrieval of suitable devices and mostly do not facilitate comparability or automated interoperability evaluations. Also, the semantics of the applications (their functionality) are not formally defined, which is needed for an automated device selection and composition.

Contrary to that, classification systems like ETIM [7] for electric devices or the industry-independent classifications eCl@ss [8] and PROLIST [9] enable description, categorization, and comparability of devices for catalogues and biddings, but do not cover commissioning, testing, and interoperability evaluation. Again, the semantics of the applications is not covered, which is essential for an automated design.

The smartphones and mobile devices domain again forced own specification approaches. They intend to describe the huge variety of different mobile devices for the sake of dynamic web content adaptation to the device-specific features and hardware characteristics such as display resolution, color depth, or supported graphic formats. The practical use case behind all approaches in this domain is to request relevant properties for a given mobile device from a centralized database to know how to dynamically adopt web contents. One of the early approaches here is the FIPA (Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents) device ontology specification [10], which defines a common set of device properties in a proprietary frame-based representation.

More recently, modern approaches like RDF and OWL have been used for the specification of mobile devices. RDF (Resource Description Framework) [11] defines the data model of the semantic web, which denotes the vision of a world wide web, where the contents are not only understandable for humans but also for machines. RDF is a graph-based data model, which uses triples, consisting of a subject, predicate, and object, as elementary representation units. Several syntaxes are available, such as the XML-based syntaxes RDF/XML or abbreviated RDF/XML [12]. The formal ontology language OWL (Web Ontology Language) [13], which evolved to one of the most predominant ontology languages in recent years, is based on RDF and extends it with further constructs for a formal, semantic specification of knowledge. Ontologies emerged from artificial intelligence and convey the syntax and semantics of concepts and their relationships in a formal, declarative, and computer-understandable way. More details about OWL will be given in Section 3.

Another representative of the mobile devices domain is CC/PP (Composite Capability/Preference Profiles) [14], which defines a structure for representing smart device profile information in RDF. The structure of CC/PP is more restrictive than a general RDF model and reduces the expressive power of RDF, which causes several problems. This led to the development of DDR (Device Description Repository) [15] that standardizes an API and a core vocabulary for describing and accessing properties of mobile devices. The quite minimalistic core vocabulary is formally specified in OWL, but it is used as specification document only and not as device description format. Instead, the devices are stored in either WURFL- (Wireless Universal Resource File-) [16] or UAProf- (User Agent Profile-) [17] based databases, which are the two most established databases for mobile devices. WURFL defines an own XML-based specification format whereas UAProf is based on CC/PP.

None of the existing approaches from the mobile devices domain supports advanced features like device retrieval, interoperability evaluation, or commissioning at the same time, nor do they specify the semantics of the device applications, which are required for an automated design.

3. Ontology-Based Device Descriptions

The absence of an adequate device description format as pointed out in Sections 1 and 2 led to the development of ODDs as novel device description format, as it will be introduced in this section. In broad state-of-the-art surveys and several alternative implementations of technical prototypes using different technologies, OWL with its expressiveness and nonetheless very easy and minimalistic RDF data model shaped up as the most suitable technology. ODDs are purely based on OWL and its RDF-based XML serialization. This is in contrast to other existing approaches (cf. Section 2), which use either proprietary languages and ASCII- or XML-based formats, or which are purely based on RDF or use OWL only partially.

3.1. Object-Oriented Modeling with OWL

With OWL, things, and thus devices in our case, can be described in an object-oriented way. Each thing is represented in OWL as OWL individual(also called instance), which belongs to one or more concepts. An OWL concept can have properties, for which all its individuals may define values, but do not have to. This conforms to the concept of optional data as a basic principle of OWL and RDF. The membership of properties to concepts is defined via their domain that lists all allowed concepts. Properties relating individuals with values each forms an RDF triple in the underlying data model, where the individual forms the subject, the property the predicate, and the value the object.

It is important to know that all resources in OWL, for example, concepts, properties, and individuals, are identified by a globally unique URI, which is used as subject, predicate, or object in RDF triples, the underlying data of OWL. In the following, we use the prefix ba as abbreviation for the URI http://www.ga-entwurf.de/repository. A prefixed notation such as ba:Device (the URI of the concept device) thereby stands for the corresponding full URI http://www.ga-entwurf.de/repository#Device.

OWL distinguishes between three types of properties, the OWL datatype properties, OWL object properties, and OWL annotation properties.OWL datatype properties on the one hand constitute properties with values of a certain primitive type, such as String, Integer, Float, or Boolean values. Properties in general can be functional, which means that they can have at most one value, or nonfunctional; that is, they may have arbitrary many values. For our purposes, the following combinations of datatypes and multiplicities of datatype properties are used for the ODDs:

(i)functional Boolean datatype properties, for defining whether a certain feature is provided or not (true or false)

(ii)functional integer datatype properties, for properties with integer values,

(iii)functional float datatype properties, for properties with floating-point values,

(iv)functional string datatype properties, for text based properties such as names or descriptions.

OWL object properties, on the other hand, describe binary relations between individuals. Instead of primitive types, their values are individuals of certain concepts. As an example, a functional object property ba:deviceManufacturer can be defined, which relates individuals of class ba:Device with individuals of class ba:Manufacturer, stating that the devices are manufactured by a certain manufacturer.

Additionally, we use object properties also for the so-called enumerated properties, which are properties that own a predefined set of allowed values. They are used instead of string datatype properties with predefined allowed values. To give an example, the object property ba:deviceMountingForm can be used for defining the mounting form of a device. It predefines a set of individuals, where each of it represents a certain mounting form, such as cap-rail mounting, surface mounting, or pole mounting. The advantage of this approach compared to string datatype properties is that each value can be globally referenced by its URI and additionally enriched with further information by annotation properties.

As mentioned before, all resources in OWL are uniquely identified by URIs, which enables a powerful referencing of information from different sources. For readability by humans, however, URIs are rather unhandy. At his point, OWL annotation properties come into play, which can be added to each resource, be it a concept, datatype property, object property, or individual. Via the predefined annotation property rdfs:label, human-readable, multilingual names encoded via specific tags (e.g., en, de, and fr) can be added to resources, such as "Automation Device" as an English name for ba:Device or "Automationsgerät" as a German name. And the predefined annotation property rdfs:comment can be used to add multilingual descriptions to describe resources in more detail with several words or sentences.

Summarized, OWL concepts and OWL properties define an object-oriented model, like classes and objects in object-oriented programming or object oriented databases. Individuals are of a certain concept (e.g., ba:Device), can have several properties of primitive type (e.g., ba:deviceName, ba:deviceIngressProtection,ba:deviceMountingForm), and can be related to other individuals via binary relations (e.g., ba:deviceManufacturer). Additionally, OWL enriches this object-oriented model with multilingual names and descriptions and expressive domain, range, and constraint definitions. This altogether constitutes the technical base for the ODDs, as explained in the next section.

3.2. Ontology Layer Architecture

Another feature of OWL is its support of ontology importing. An ontology can import one or more other ontologies using owl:import statements. When loading the ontology, all import statements are resolved and all statements of the imported ontologies are loaded. The imported ontologies again may import other ontologies, which are also loaded recursively till all imports are resolved.

This feature allows for a separation of knowledge in different ontologies. One can, for example, separate concepts (terminological knowledge) from individuals (assertional knowledge) or distinguish between concepts or individuals of different categories.

For the ODDs, the ontology importing feature was used to build up a hierarchical ontology layer architecture, which can be seen in Figure 1. Arrows in this figure represent import relationships between the different ontologies and layers. Overall, four ontology layers are defined and used for the specification of field and automation devices. Layer 1 contains the terminological ontologies, which define the complete vocabulary of the ODDs. Layer 2 specifies common, platform-specific instances such as processors, transceivers or standard types, which can be reused in all ODDs of the corresponding platform. Layer 3 refines Layer 2 towards specific-manufacturers and adds definitions of manufacturer specific types or profiles. Layer 4 finally bases upon the definitions of all superior ontologies and contains the individual device-specific ODDs as such, which are platform and manufacturer specific.

Figure 1
figure 1

Ontology layer architecture.

This ontology layer architecture has been implemented for the building automation domain, but can in principle also be adopted for other domains such as industry or process automation. As specific platform for Layers 2, 3, and 4, the LON platform is used in the examples within this paper. In the next sections, the four layers are described in more detail.

3.2.1. Layer 1: Domain-Specific Vocabulary

The topmost layer of the ontology architecture consists of the terminological ontologies, which define the complete domain-specific vocabulary. It is the only layer, where terminological knowledge in form of OWL concepts, properties, annotations, and constraints is defined. All other layers contain instance definitions (assertional knowledge) only, which are exclusively based on this domain-specific vocabulary.

For the building automation domain, there are three terminological ontologies defined in Layer 1. The schema ontology as the topmost ontology defines all general concepts and corresponding properties, annotations, and constraints, such as the examples from Section 3.1. It enables the definition of devices, transceivers, processors, manufacturers, functional profiles, inputs, outputs, operation modes, configuration parameters, semantics, and so on, along with their descriptive datatype properties. And it defines the structure of the object-oriented model, by relating these classes via object properties.

Specific concept definitions, like the functions or I/O modules of devices, are encapsulated in separate ontologies, which extend the schema ontology. The functions ontology, for example, defines a taxonomy of all building automation functions, such as constant light control, automatic light control, or presence detection, as can be seen in Figure 2. They are classified in the four categories sensor, operating, controller, and actuator by means of a concept hierarchy, which is a fundamental instrument of ontologies. The functions can be further described by datatype properties, such as the concept Constant_light_control, that has the two Boolean attributes, switchOnDelay and switchOffDelay, which define whether the function supports a switch on and switch off delay, respectively.

Figure 2
figure 2

Taxonomy of functions.

The separation in three ontologies is done for reasons of a design workflow spanning usage and independent development. Functions for example are not only used for describing the functionality of devices, they are also essential entities for describing functional requirements. Thus, the functions ontology is also used in the initial stage of requirement engineering [18]. And by using the same vocabulary in both cases, an unambiguously direct mapping of requirements to appropriate devices is possible in the device selection phase, which is an important benefit.

3.2.2. Layer 2: Predefined Platform-Specific Data

Layer 2 of the ontology architecture adds platform-specific instance definitions to Layer 1. Again, this layer is separated in several different ontologies. For the LON platform, these are the hardware, LonMark standardizations, manufacturer, and semantics ontology. The hardware ontology for example specifies all processors, transceivers, smart transceivers, and transmission mediums that are relevant for the LON platform, and the LonMark standardizations ontology defines standardized LonMark profiles, network variable types, and configuration parameter types together with all existing data types.

Device manufacturers reuse these specifications in their own ODDs by simply referencing them via object properties (e.g., ba:deviceManufacturer, ba:deviceTransceiver). This referencing eases the specification process, safes memory, and avoids duplicate specifications and inconsistencies.

3.2.3. Layer 3: Manufacturer-Specific Types

While Layers 1 and 2 were still manufacturer independent, Layer 3 focuses on manufacturer-specific type and profile definitions. In manufacturer-specific type definition ontologies, one for each manufacturer and each with a manufacturer-specific unique URI, all variable parameter and profile types of the corresponding manufacturer are predefined as individuals. Again, the individuals defined here can be reused by the device manufacturers in their ODDs by referencing them, with the same benefits as on Layer 2. For other platforms than LON, Layer 3 may be omitted completely if the platform does not support manufacturer-specific definitions.

3.2.4. Layer 4: Manufacturer-Specific Device Descriptions

Layer 4 as the lowermost layer finally comprises the individual platform and manufacturer-specific ODDs as such. The ODDs employ the ontology definitions from the superior layers, as explained before, by importing and using them. Only the concepts from the Layer 1 ontologies (e.g., ba:Device,ba:Functional-Profile) are instantiated here and assigned property values, which have not been instantiated in the subordinate layers. For all other concepts, the required individuals defined in Layers 2 and 3 are reused by referencing them. This specification with the same ontology vocabulary ensures a unified specification of all devices and facilitates a manufacturer-spanning comparability and retrieval of devices.

As appropriate partitioning, the assignment of one ontology file for each device seemed to be the best choice. This reflects the current state of the art practice in domain engineering (cf. Section 1) and fits the practical demands at the best. For each ODD, a globally unique URI is used. It is composed from the manufacturer-specific URI extended by a device-specific identifier.

3.3. Semantic Specification of Devices

Beside a comprehensive specification of the hardware of building automation devices, especially specific semantic knowledge about their profiles is required for an automated design. This includes knowledge about the specific functions implemented by each profile (e.g., constant light control, automatic light control, and occupancy control), how profiles should be parameterized, what purpose their input and output datapoints have (more precisely than standardized variable types allow for), and how they can be connected appropriately.

For this purpose, a semantic specification model has been developed, which is integral part of the ODDs. Its application is demonstrated in Figure 3 for the semantic specification of a LON-based light controller profile. The syntactical definition of profile interfaces constitutes one part of the model, as can be seen in the lower part of the Figure. As in conventional electronic device descriptions, such as the LonMark Device Interface (XIF) Files [6] or the binary EIB/KNX description files, profile interfaces are described by a set of input and output datapoints with corresponding names and datatypes and a set of configuration parameters. This profile interface layer is extended by a profile semantics layer that adds the required semantics by means of four key constructs: the operation modes, their parameterization, functions, and semantic types. It enables a semantically deep but at the same time easy-to-handle black box specification of profiles, as will be explained in the following.

Figure 3
figure 3

Interface and semantics of a light controller profile.

As many other profiles, the example profile in Figure 3 is quite advanced and supports multiple functions like automatic light control, luminance-dependent automatic light control, and constant light control, depending on its parameterization. This change of the functional behaviour needs to be expressed in the semantic model, which therefore allows defining different operation modes for one profile conditioned by parameters.

Figure 3 shows one of the three possible operation modes, in which the profile realizes the function constant light control. All possible functions, such as the function constant light control itself, are defined in a function taxonomy, as was explained in Section 3.2.1 (cf. Figure 2). Functions are the most important device selection criteria for a function-oriented automated design, where based on a functional requirement specification full-functioning and complete building automation systems are to be designed. Already in the stage of requirement engineering, the functions from the function taxonomy are used for the requirement specification, which ensures an unambiguous mapping of requirements to devices and corresponding profiles in the later design phases.

The functions can have descriptive datatype properties for a precise distinction of their semantics. The function constant light control from the example profile has two Boolean datatype properties, the switchOnDelay and switchOffDelay. Both are set to true, which indicates that the profile realizes a constant light control with a switch-on and switch-off delay in the given operation mode.

To select the shown operation mode, the configuration parameter cpClCtrlMode needs to be set to 0, which is also specified in OWL. This information can be used in the device commissioning phase for an automatic parameterization of profiles, which unburdens the system integrator from doing it manually.

To define a precise meaning for input and output datapoints far beyond standardized variable types, semantic types are introduced. They are assigned to datapoints and used to create semantically correct connections between datapoints and to analyse the interoperability between profiles. Semantic types are predefined in the semantics ontology of Layer 2 of the ontology layer architecture (cf. Figure 1) and used via object referencing in the ODDs.

Besides the semantic types, input datapoints must be declared as either mandatory, optional, or inactive for a given operation mode. Mandatory inputs are essential for a proper functioning of the profile and must be bound with an interoperable output datapoint providing the desired information. For example, the input datapoints nv1 (room luminance level) and nv2 (occupancy state) in Figure 3 are mandatory for the constant light controller. Optional inputs on the contrary can be bound, but do not have to. They provide additional information, such as nv3 (manual override from the user) or nv4 (luminance setpoint adjustment). Inactive inputs must not be bound, because they are not regarded by the profile in the given operation mode. Output datapoints on the other hand are distinguished in active and inactive. Only active outputs provide values and are possible candidates for datapoint bindings. With that information, an automated function-block-oriented composition of building automation systems is feasible. Automated design algorithms know which operation mode of a functional profile needs to be selected for a desired functionality and which datapoints of neighbored profiles are to be bound for a proper functioning.

3.4. Ontology Standardization and Maintenance

For a broad practical usage of the introduced ODDs, a functioning business model and some kind of standardization committee are required. The task of the standardization committee would be to provide an extensive and generally accepted catalogue of definitions for Layers 1 and 2, which altogether constitute a common semantic base and uniform specification framework for a given domain and platform. The ontologies of the manufacturer-specific Layers 3 and the ODDs as such (Layer 4) on the contrary should be specified by the device manufacturers, as is common practice in domain engineering. All device manufacturers are obliged to specify their devices according to the definitions from Layers 1 and 2 only.

Whenever new hardware is available or the existing standard profiles, standard variable types, functions, and so forth need to be expanded, it should be the standardization committee's task to extend and adopt the ontologies and provide them to all manufacturers. The developed ontology architecture is very flexible for extensions of this kind. New concepts, properties and individuals can in contrast to XML or database schemata be added easily to the upper two ontology layers, without any negative effect on the existing ODDs (forward compatibility).

Altogether, the introduced device description approach provides a formal, extensible, manufacturer-independent, and machine-readable specification format, as it is required for design automation. It enables a deep, unified specification of devices from different domains and platforms and thus ensures comparability of different devices. The ODDs are furthermore particularly suitable for a comprehensive specification of the hardware and software of devices, including also their functionality and characteristics necessary for a function-oriented design and automated interoperability evaluation.

4. Generic Ontology Views and Data Access

As shown in Section 3, the ODDs define a variety of different information for each device, ranging from hardware criteria to the software applications and their semantics. Users and the automated design algorithms must be able to access and search this information in an adequate and flexible way. Depending on the specific application scenario, a device catalogue tool, a search mask, a device editor, or an automatic design tool, different demands exist. Data could be needed only in extracts or as a whole or in a different aggregation as in the underlying model.

To face this variety of possible demands in a flexible way, a generic ontology view concept, virtual ontology properties, and generic data access mechanisms have been developed. They enable the flexible definition of user-specific views on the ODDs and their transparent access via a generic interface. These approaches will be explained in the following sections.

4.1. Ontology View Approach

In database theory, a view describes resources of interest to a user in form of virtual tables that are not part of the physical schema, but computed or collated from data in the database. Views can be used for example to represent a subset of the data contained in a table or they can join and simplify multiple tables into a single virtual table. They thus can hide complexity of the data and provide abstraction.

Such a view concept would be also very beneficial for ontologies. Compared to databases, however, ontologies rely on a different underlying data model, namely, RDF. In RDF, all information is represented in form of triples that altogether form a complex RDF graph. An example RDF graph can be seen in Figure 4. This RDF graph shows a device individual sp:DEV_58_90003A82003F0411 of an ODD along with some of its properties in RDF pictorial representation. Resources (subject or object) are represented as green ellipses, predicates as directed arrows originating at the subject and pointing to the object, and literal values are drawn as orange rectangles. Note that the figure only shows a small excerpt from the complex RDF graph of the corresponding ODD.

Figure 4
figure 4

Basic RDF graph.

Via the three datatype properties ba:deviceName, ba:deviceIngressProtection, and ba:deviceSPID the name of the device ("Lumina RDA2"), its ingress protection (20), and its standard program ID ("90003A82003F0411") are defined. Furthermore, the enumerated property ba:deviceMountingForm defines that the mounting form is cap-rail mounting. The device has two functional profiles, defined via the object property ba:deviceProfile and corresponding individuals of the concept ba:FunctionalProfile, of which sp:FP_58_21502_4_1_11_465 represents the light controller profile from Figure 3. The processor of the device (object property ba:deviceProcessor) is the individual hw:Neuron_3150 from the hardware ontology of Layer 2 of the ontology layer architecture (cf. Figure 1).

Ontology views and views on RDF graphs are an important research topic in the semantic web community. Adequate view concepts are of major importance for a wide acceptance and usability of the semantic web. They are needed to provide users an appropriate, use case-specific excerpt of the potentially very complex ontologies, which otherwise are too complex for a proper orientation and understanding. Various approaches for the specification of ontology views exist in parallel, and till now, there is no standard way for a proper view specification.

A popular approach is the definition and application of a view definition language. Reference [19], for example, introduces RVL (RDF View Language), an expressive view definition language, which is based on the query language RQL (RDF Query Language). RVL provides users with the ability to define a view in the same way in which they write normal RDF/S schemas and resource descriptions. It is capable of creating virtual resource descriptions, but also virtual RDF/S schemas from concepts, properties, as well as resource descriptions available on the semantic web. Reference [20] on the contrary introduces CLOVE (Constraint Language for Ontology View Environments), a high-level constraint language that extends OWL constraints. CLOVE allows the dynamic creation of view classes based on complex logical conditions, supports inheritance of views, and also incorporates user role definitions and access rights.

Other ontology view approaches rely on graph-based constraints, instead of view definition languages. In [21], the concept of traversal views is defined. A traversal view is a view where a user specifies the central concept or concepts of interest, the relationships to traverse to find other concepts to include in the view, and the depth of the traversal. It thus defines views by forming clusters of neighbored nodes of an RDF graph that surround a given central concept.

In contrast to existing ontology view approaches, which rely on view definition languages or graph-based approaches, we developed and introduce a much simpler, easy-to-handle, and quite effective ontology view concept. We disclaim on the introduction and application of a specific language but extend the ontologies by a view definition. This view definition lists all available concepts together with their associated datatype and object properties in an XML-based document and allows the concept-specific declaration of view specific identifiers for each property, thus declaring their membership for the individual views.

Considering the graph from Figure 4, specific ontology views can be defined by declaring the datatype and object properties of certain concepts as members of a specific view. For demonstration purposes, two different views are defined, a hardware and a software-specific one. The hardware-specific view on the one hand considers the hardware aspects of devices, such as the processor, mounting form and ingress protection and owns the view identifier "hw1." The software-specific view with the view identifier "sw1" on the other hand hides hardware characteristics and focuses mainly on the functional profiles of the device.

Figures 5 and 6 show the resulting view-specific RDF graphs. The visible edges and nodes in the graphs represent the datatype and object properties that are labeled with the view-specific identifier "hw1" (Figure 5), respectively, "sw1" (Figure 6) in the view definition. The greyed out graph elements are not visible in the specific view but only shown for a better illustration. ba:deviceName is labeled with both identifiers and thus belongs to both views.

Figure 5
figure 5

Hardware-specific view on the RDF graph example.

Figure 6
figure 6

Software-specific view on the RDF graph example.

4.2. Virtual Ontology Properties

Along with the ontology view approach from the last section, another key concept is introduced for a flexible and generic data access mechanism. It is the concept of virtual properties that are used to establish shortcuts in the RDF graph. Virtual properties do not exist as real properties but are virtual and computed on demand. We introduce two kinds of virtual properties: virtual object properties and virtual datatype properties.

Virtual object properties on the one hand form the transitive closure over two or more interlinked object properties and thus connect two nonadjacent concepts with each other. An example of a virtual object property is shown in Figure 7. In this RDF graph, the device individual from the previous figures and one of its functional profiles, the light controller from Figure 3, are shown. According to the semantic specification model (cf. Section 3.3), the functionality of the profile is defined via instances of the class ba:OperationMode. Each operation mode defines one or more functions that are realized by the profile in the given operation mode. The function individuals are instances of the concepts from the function taxonomy in Figure 2. In the example in Figure 7, the individual sp:Automatic_light1 is an instance of comms:Automatic_light_control and sp:Constant_light_control1 is an instance of comms:Constant_light_control. Altogether, this defines that the profile implements an automatic light, respectively, constant light control in its operation modes.

Figure 7
figure 7

Virtual object property example.

For being able to directly query the functions that a device as sum of its profiles and corresponding operation modes implements, a virtual object property can be defined. The virtual object property ba:deviceFunction expresses this relation as transitive closure of the object property chain ba:deviceProfile, ba:profileOperationMode and ba:operationModeFunction. By querying all values of ba:deviceFunction, the user gets immediately all functions implemented by the device without the need to navigate to all functional profiles, furthermore to all their operation modes and finally to all their functions.

Virtual datatype properties, on the other hand, relate datatype properties of distant concepts via the transitive closure over one or more object properties with a given concept. This means that a datatype property, which originally belongs to a different concept, is directly related with a concept as if it would belong to it.

An example for a virtual datatype property is demonstrated in Figure 8. The datatype property ba:manufacturerName, which belongs to the concept ba:Manufacturer, is related as virtual datatype property ba:deviceManufacturerName with the concept ba:Device. Virtually, it is now a datatype property of the device itself and can be queried directly for the given device, instead of navigating to the manufacturer individual and then further to the literal value of ba:manufacturerName.

Figure 8
figure 8

Virtual datatype property example.

In addition, the relation ba:deviceManufacturer can be hidden in a corresponding ontology view definition, for example, ontology view "hw1," whereby the manufacturer concept and all its properties are excluded from the model as is illustrated in Figure 8. Thus, the user never needs to get in touch with the manufacturer concept but he uses the virtual datatype property ba:deviceManufacturerName instead.

Virtual properties are declared by using OWL annotation properties. Annotation properties can be used to add metainformation to resources, be it a concept, datatype property, object property, or individual. For our purposes, we defined two annotation properties, ba:virtualDatatypeProperty and ba:virtualObjectProperty, within Layer 1 of the ontology layer architecture (cf. Figure 1). They are used to define the virtual property definitions. Virtual property definitions are annotated to the OWL concepts, where the virtual properties start from. The specification includes the URI of the virtual property, the path to the destination property and multilingual names and descriptions. Like all datatype and object properties, virtual datatype properties and virtual object properties can also be declared as members of ontology views in the view definition. In this example, ba:deviceManufacturerName is declared as member of the ontology view "hw1."

The combination of ontology views and virtual properties can span completely new virtual terminological layers over existing RDF graph, simply by editing the view definitions and by introducing virtual properties. This enables very flexible, easily customizable, and object-oriented views on the underlying ODDs according to requirements. It is a very powerful mechanism for creating generic ODD tools uncoupled from the underlying ontologies, such as generic ODD editors [22], search masks, or device browser that are easily adoptable to user-specific needs without changing the program code.

4.3. Generic Data Access

As the last, two sections have shown, ontology views and virtual properties provide an effective way for virtually adopting the structure of RDF graphs for user and tool-specific views. What is still an open issue is the question on how an adequate access to the ontology data can be provided, without the need to get in touch with all the details of views and virtual properties.

For this purpose, a generic data access interface is defined and implemented that provides access on the underlying ontology data. It consists of a set of generic data access methods whose implementation is detached from the specific underlying ontologies. Two generic terminological methods enable to list all datatype, respectively, all object properties for a given concept under regard of a given view identifier. No difference is made here whether the properties are real or virtual, this is deliberately hidden behind the interface. Virtual properties are thus treated as if they were real properties, and they look the same for the user. All information required is contained in the terminological ontologies from Layer 1 (cf. Figure 1) and extracted from there. For the hardware-specific view "hw1" (cf. Figures 5 and 8) and the concept ba:Device for example, the datatype properties ba:deviceName, ba:device-IngressProtection, ba:deviceMounting-Form,ba:deviceManufacturerName (virtual property), and the object property ba:deviceProcessor are returned.

Two generic assertional methods then allow for querying the values of a given individual for a given datatype or object property respectively, no matter whether it is a real or virtual property. Here, device-specific information defined in the ODDs needs to be accessed and returned. This can be done via direct property access or SPARQL-Queries, as will be explained later on in Section 5.3. As an example, again consider the RDF graph from Figure 5. For the individual sp:DEV_58_90003A82003F0411 and the datatype property ba:deviceName the assertional method returns "Lumina RDA2". For the (virtual) property ba:deviceManufacturerName (cf. Figure 8) the method returns "Spelsberg Building Automation". Given the object property ba:deviceProcessor or ba:deviceFunction, the object property-specific assertional method returns the individuals hw:Neuron_3150 and sp:Automatic_light1, sp:Constant_light-_control1, respectively.

These four methods thus enable to browse the whole RDF graph in a generic way, detached from the concrete underlying ontologies. Starting from an individual, at first all datatype and object properties of the individual's concept for a specific view can be requested. Further terminological methods are contained in the generic data access interface that can be used for requesting the datatype of datatype properties, the range of object properties, the multilingual names and descriptions of concepts and properties, and so on. The terminological methods thereby provide the means for accessing the terminological knowledge of the ODDs, the semantics of the ontologies, encapsulated in the Layer 1 ontologies. This is an important advantage compared to relational databases, where the semantics of the data is not explicitly available and accessible, but hidden within the design of the database tables.

Then, after querying all datatype and object properties of an individual, their values can be accessed with the assertional methods. Whereas the values of datatype properties are literal values, object properties on the other hand point to other individuals. Then, for each individual, again all corresponding view-specific datatype and object properties can be requested and their values can be queried. In this way, the whole view-specific RDF graph incorporating virtual properties can be browsed step by step. Object-oriented device browsers for displaying the characteristics of devices, such as web-based device catalogues, can easily be implemented based on this generic interface. By using the interface, the tools are detached from the concrete underlying ontologies. Changes in the terminological or assertional knowledge do not require any changes in the tool implementations.

5. Triple Store-Based Device Repository

For handling and storing the ODDs, which were introduced in Section 3, a persistent, flexible, and efficient database technology is required. The database should be able to handle large datasets (i.e., thousands of devices) and perform efficient data access and queries, for example, for accessing device properties, for querying for devices that match certain requirements, or for estimating their interoperability. It must also be able to cope with ontology views and virtual properties as explained in Section 4.

As mentioned before, the basic underlying data units of OWL are RDF tripel that together form an RDF graph. RDF graphs can be stored in specialized databases, called RDF triple stores, also abbreviated as RDF stores or triple stores. RDF triple stores enable the management of large graphs and their querying with the query language SPARQL [23] (see Section 5.3). They typically consist of a query framework and underlying backend. Jena and Sesame are two widely accepted and mature query frameworks, amongst a variety of others like 3store, RDFSuite, and Openlink Virtuoso. Most triple stores use a relational database management system as backend to manage RDF data [24]. Alternatively, they can rely on in-memory implementations or on native persistent storage systems with their own implementation of databases. Triple stores are capable of handling very large datasets of more than one billion triples [25], which continuously grows with new hardware and better optimized triple stores. The largest known triple store yet has been implemented with BigOWLIM and can handle 20 billion statements, running on a single server [26]. It is believed that "future RDF triple stores will be used as backends for application systems in analogy to existing relational databases" [27], which shows the relevance of triple stores as technology of the semantic web, known as Web 3.0, for the future.

5.1. Database Representation of RDF

Existing RDF triple stores employ a variety of storage schemas. "The most popular database representations for shredding RDF/S resource descriptions into relational databases are: the schema-oblivious(also called generic or vertical), the schema-aware (also called specific or binary) and a hybrid representation, combining features of the previous two" [28]. The difference in the three approaches lies in the definition and usage of different table designs for holding the RDF triples. While the schema-oblivious approach uses only one table for storing all triples (the triples table, see Table 1), the schema-aware uses separate tables for each property and for each class. The hybrid approach in turn uses one table per property instance with different range value, and overall one table for all class membership definitions.

Table 1 The schema-oblivious database layout.

The open source framework Jena SDB [29], which is used in our implementations, relies on the schema-oblivious approach. This ensures a maximum flexibility for on-the-fly extensions by further classes and properties, without the need for adding or deleting tables, which is necessary in the schema-aware approach.

RDF triple stores readily manage the concept of optional data. In OWL and RDF, it is not assumed that complete information about any resource is available. It is convenient to omit values which are not known or not of interest. Missing property values in a relational database, however, require null values in the corresponding database table and still require storage space. The possibility of null values complicates the definition of SQL queries, which makes SQL a bit awkward for use in dealing with less structured information. In RDF, however, the corresponding triple simply not exists and no null values must be inserted, which does not consume storage space. RDF triple stores are thus much better suitable for semistructured data with optional information than relational databases with their rigid table structure.

5.2. Triple Store Architecture and Management

Jena SDB as our underlying triple store framework relies on the schema-oblivious approach; that is, it uses one database table to store all RDF triples. Thus, all ontologies of the layer architecture from Figure 1, including all device descriptions, one ontology file per device, are serialized as RDF-Triples and stored altogether as triples in the same triples table, as shown in Figure 9. The triple table is managed by the RDF triple store that forms the device repository. It contains all device descriptions and enables data access and retrieval operations, as will be shown in the next sections.

Figure 9
figure 9

Triple store-based device repository.

To fill the device repository with data and to manage its contents, basically two operations are needed: adding devices to the device repository and deleting devices from the device repository. Both operations are very easy to realize as triple store. The adding operation simply loads one or more ODDs, parses them into RDF triples, and sends all triples to the database, which stores them in the triples table. If the database has not yet been initialized also the ontologies from Layers 1, 2, and 3 need to be added initially.

Since each ODD owns a unique URI, the deleting operation of devices from the device repository simply consists of deleting all the triples, whose subject or object URI contains the device-specific URI. With that easy-to-implement operation, it is ensured that a device and all references to it are completely removed from the repository.

5.3. Querying the Device Repository

Once a database has been initialized with ODDs, mechanisms are required to access or retrieve the information contained in the device repository. Technically, two different access mechanisms are possible. In case of a given individual, its property values can be accessed directly via specialized get methods of the Jena SDB API, which is the fastest accessing mechanism. This works for real datatype and object properties, but not for virtual properties. Secondly, the available device repository can be queried with SPARQL queries. SPARQL [23] is an easy to handle graph-based query language that allows querying RDF graphs similar like SQL can do with relational databases. SPARQL queries typically define graph patterns that are to be matched with given ontologies. Every information defined in the RDF model, namely, all instances and their datatype and object properties, can be referred.

Simple SPARQL queries can also be used to query the properties of given individuals, such as the properties of a certain device. Beyond that SPARQL can do much more. More complex queries can be formulated and executed that query the whole database for suitable devices in the pool of all existing, thereby realizing the essential step of mapping requirements to suitable device candidates. For example, it is possible to formulate a query that selects all devices with required device properties, which have a transceiver with certain properties, and which contain a profile that realizes two specific functions with corresponding properties.

An example of a simple SPARQL query is shown in Algorithm 1. The query selects all devices, which have an ingress protection of at least 20, an operating voltage of either "24 V DC" or "24 V AC" and which have the mounting form "surface mounting" or "cap rail."

Algorithm 1: A simple SPARQL query.

SELECT DISTINCT ?x1 WHERE {

 ?x1 a ba:Device.

 ?x1 ba:deviceIngressProtection ?x2.

 FILTER (?x2 >= 20).

 ?x1 ba:deviceOperatingVoltage ?x3.

 FILTER (?x3 = ba:DC_24_V ||

     ?x3 = ba:AC_24_V).

 ?x1 ba:deviceMountingForm ?x4.

 FILTER (?x4 = ba:Surface_mounting ||

     ?x4 = ba:Cap_rail)}

Furthermore, SPARQL queries are used to query the values of virtual datatype and object properties for the generic assertional methods (cf. Section 4.3). Since virtual properties form the transitive closure of several object properties, a SPARQL query for resolving the values of a virtual property consists of a chain of these object properties and corresponding variables. The queries are generated dynamically on demand according to the OWL annotations that define the virtual properties. To be processed by a relational DBMS, SPARQL queries are transformed to SQL queries, which can then be optimized and evaluated by the relational query engine. Efficient translation algorithms are available and integral part of RDF triple stores, which will be even further improved in the future by ongoing research [24].

5.4. Generic SPARQL Query Generation

To disburden the users from writing SPARQL queries themselves, search masks should be provided for editing device search criteria. Based on the generic data access interface introduced in Section 4.3, generic search masks can be implemented that provide the user a comfortable GUI and that generates and executes SPARQL queries at the push of a button. An example implementation based on our ontology view concept and following a tab-based approach is shown in Figure 10. The search mask is initialized according to a specific view and displays the terminological knowledge specific for the view. Each tab represents a certain concept and contains all its datatype properties that are members of the view, including also virtual datatype properties. The user can edit each datatype property and define values that the required devices must fit either and- or or-related, or that devices must not fit. Neighbored concepts, which are related to the concept via an object property, be it a real or virtual one, are displayed in neighbored tabs with hierarchically subordinated tabs, each of it representing further neighbored concepts. It enables the object-oriented definition of complex device requirements such as for the retrieval of all devices with certain properties that have two functional profiles with certain properties, and which implement a specific function.

Figure 10
figure 10

Generic search mask GUI.

The search mask is based on a completely generic architecture, detached from the particular ontology data. Its hierarchical tab-folder structure, the contained datatype property fields, the allowed range values of enumerated string properties, the names, labels, and all tool-tip descriptions stem from the ontology data loaded via the generic access interface during initialization. Simply by changing the underlying ontology model the search mask appears in a new adapted layout with its next execution, without the need for modifying its program code. One can even replace the whole ontology model by another one that describes another platform, such as EIB/KNX or EnOcean instead of LON. Then, you immediately get an EIB/KNX or EnOcean-based device search mask without any program modifications.

At the push of the search button a SPARQL query is dynamically generated in the background by a specialized query-generation algorithm. The query generation algorithm collects all user-defined device requirements and builds a SPARQL query that combines all requirements into a single query. A specific challenge here poses the transformation of the view-based virtual terminological layer based on virtual properties into the actual structure of the underlying RDF graph, which is done in a complex query optimization routine.

Once generated, the SPARQL query is executed by the RDF triple store. Results of the database retrieval operation are then displayed in table form in the lower part of the search mask.

5.5. Scalability and Performance

In this section, results from scalability and performance tests of our device repository implementation are shown. The tests will show how the triple store is able to cope with large amounts of data and how the device retrieval operations perform under different circumstances.

The implementation is based on Java and Jena SDB [29] with the object relational DBMS PostgreSQL as database backend. The test hardware used in this study was a system with two Quad Core Intel XEON 5530 Processors running at 2.5 GHz, 16 GB of RAM, 500 GB of storage disk space, and Linux as operating system.

As test dataset the building automation domain was chosen with the ontology architecture from Figure 1 and LON-specific ontologies on the layers 2 and 3. The ontologies from Layer 1 comprise overall 133 OWL concepts, 46 OWL object properties and 100 OWL datatype properties. The Layer 2 ontologies add 742 LON platform-specific OWL individuals to this terminological data, and the ontologies from Layer 3 additionally add 2.247 manufacturer-specific individuals for the type definitions of six manufacturers. Altogether, the ontologies from Layers 1 to 3 of the ontology layer architecture make up 25.551 triples, which form the unified ontology vocabulary and basic dataset for all test databases.

39 different ODDs for LON devices from different manufacturers with overall 79 functional profiles on the devices constitute the original dataset for Layer 4. Whereas the least complex device with one functional profile comprises 122 triples only, the most complex device equipped with nine different functional profiles sums up to 1.368 triples. All 39 devices and 79 functional profiles together comprise 11.905 triples.

For performance and scalability tests with large data volumes, the 39 device descriptions and corresponding functional profiles were renamed and duplicated by factors 10, 100, and 1.000, thus resulting in four different databases. These are the original database with 39 devices, a medium-sized database with 390 devices, a large-sized database with 3.900 devices and a very-large-sized database with 39.000 devices. Table 2 shows the characteristics of the four databases in number of devices, number of profiles, number of triples, and database size in MB. The largest database reaches a dimension of more than eleven million triples and a size of more than two GB.

Table 2 The four different device repositories.

The four databases underwent different tests to compare their performance with each other. Four different use cases are presented in the following, which regard the different possible database accessing mechanisms. All tests were executed 40 times, and their average response times in milliseconds are summarized in Table 3.

Table 3 Performance and scalability test results.

The first column shows the test results of a direct property access via the specialized get methods of the Jena SDB API. Given an individual URI and a corresponding property, all related property values are queried. As the results show, this takes on average no longer than two till four milliseconds for the four databases. It is remarkable that the size of the database, be it 37.456 or 11.930.551 triples, has only a slight influence on the response times, which approximately double from 1,83 ms to 3,52 ms for thousand times more devices.

The second column presents the results of a more complex property access based on a SPARQL-query, such as for querying the values of a virtual property. An example is the virtual datatype property ba:deviceManufacturerName from Figure 8 for a given device individual. This kind of access requires the navigation from an individual along an object property to a neighbored individual and finally the access of the corresponding datatype property values. Again, this access mechanism turns out to be very efficient, even if the response times are approximately increased by factor 2 compared to the direct property access. The increasing size of the four databases only slightly increases the query response times, from the smallest to the largest database by only 14,1%.

The third and fourth columns show the query response times for device retrieval operations with two alternative SPARQL queries, a simple and a complex one. The simple query is the query shown in Algorithm 1 (see Section 5.3). This query contains one select variable, overall four variables, three different properties and three FILTER constructs. The complex query additionally regards twelve further properties of the device, such as certain transmission mediums, or the functions of its functional profiles with certain attributes. It overall contains seven select variables, thirteen variables, fifteen different properties, and four FILTER constructs.

As the results show, the query response times correlate with the size of the particular database. Whereas the simple query for the smallest database requires 19 ms, it requires for the largest database 2.175 ms, which is a difference of factor 114. But this is still less than the factor of 318 between the numbers of triples of both databases. For the complex query, the factor between the smallest database (0,36 s) and the largest database (5,2 s) is much smaller and amounts to only 14. This indicates that the query response times scale with an increased database size with at most linear time complexity. It ensures a good scalability for arbitrary complex databases and an instantaneous performance gain on better hardware.

6. Conclusions

In this paper a pure ontology-based device description approach for automation devices based on OWL and RDF, the ODDs, was introduced. Along with a layered ontology architecture, the ODDs enable an easy, formal, object-oriented, machine-readable, and unified specification of building automation devices of different platforms. The vocabulary can be easily extended by further classes and properties and ensures a comparability of different devices. The approach is suitable for specifying all kinds of information, ranging from device hardware characteristics to a deep semantic specification of software applications, including their operation modes and parameterization. Also, all characteristics that affect the interoperability of devices can be expressed, which enables an automated algorithmic interoperability evaluation.

Furthermore, a combination of ontology views and virtual properties has been introduced, that enables customizable, object-oriented views on the underlying ODDs. Transparent data access is provided by a generic access interface which hides the complexity of views and virtual properties. Generic ODD tools can be implemented based on the interface such as ODD editors, search masks or device browser, that automatically adopt to the underlying ontology data.

Along with the ODDs and generic access interface, a persistent device repository implemented as RDF triple store was introduced. The device repository affords an efficient data access and automatic device retrieval, is capable of handling large sets of devices and shows a good scalability, as test results with up to 39.000 devices have shown.

The presented approach finally overcomes the drawbacks of existing device descriptions by facilitating a wide range of essential automatic operations such as for device retrieval, operation mode selection, device parameterization, and automatic interoperability evaluation. This altogether enables an automated design of building automation systems, what can strongly reduce the design time, design costs, and finally the overall costs for building automation systems. Thereby, the amortization is achieved earlier, which should promote an increased number of installations in the future and contribute to further energy savings in buildings.

Ongoing and future work covers several topics related to the ODDs. Beside generic ODD editors, which have been introduced in [22], also automatic mechanisms for validating the created ODDs are required in practice to ensure valid specifications. Research is being spent on reasoning-based approaches for consistency and completeness checks of ODDs. Reasoning is applicable since OWL as the underlying specification language is a formal logical language that directly supports reasoning, which is a major advantage of OWL.

Other work will cover approaches for an automatic interoperability evaluation of devices of different platforms, which includes the automatic retrieval of suitable gateways that can bridge the communication between the different technologies.

Last but not least, a hierarchical, platform-independent device requirement specification and device retrieval is under development. It is going to enable a user-controlled, stepwise definition of device criteria that can be matched against ODDs of different platforms. This would enable an important change in the design process of automation systems: the decision for using a specific technological platform can be left open to later design phases, where all requirements are finally known. Then, the optimal technological platform(s) can be estimated at the end, thus providing the best technological conditions for the automation systems to be designed.

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Acknowledgments

The ODDs and the device repository have been developed by the Dresden University of Technology along with industrial partners within the research projects AUTEG (promotional reference 16IN0405), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, and AUDRAGA (promotional reference 01BN0908), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, due to a decision of the German Parliament (see http://www.ga-entwurf.de/ for both projects).

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Dibowski, H., Kabitzsch, K. Ontology-Based Device Descriptions and Device Repository for Building Automation Devices. J Embedded Systems 2011, 623461 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1155/2011/623461

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