ThingWorx Azure IoT Hub Connector 4.3.0 Release Notes
The ThingWorx Azure IoT Hub Connector 4.3.0 supports ThingWorx Platform 9.x.
The following sections include information about ThingWorx Azure IoT Hub Connector 4.3.0 and the ThingWorx Microsoft Azure Industrial IoT (IIoT) integration.
Components of the Distribution Bundle
The ThingWorx Azure IoT Hub Connector distribution bundle includes the following components:
• The core connection server and the Azure IoT Hub Protocol Adapter, configured to support Azure IoT Hubs, Azure IoT Edge Devices and Edge Modules, and Azure Blob Storage Containers connected to an Azure IoT Hub. For users of the ThingWorx Azure IIoT OPC UA integration the protocol adapter component translates messages from the OPC UA format into ThingWorx AlwaysOn format and vice versa.
• The Azure IoT Hub Extension must be imported into ThingWorx Platform to support Azure IoT entities. This extension provides entities to support Azure IoT Devices and Azure IoT Edge Devices, Azure IoT Edge Modules, Azure IoT Edge Runtime, an Azure IoT Hub, and Azure Blob Storage Containers. For the Azure OPC UA integration, it provides mashups to support the IIoT entities.
• Another extension, called Connection Services Extension (CSE), manages communication between ThingWorx Platform and the Azure IoT Hub Connector.
Together, these components provide the following features:
• Scalable connectivity between ThingWorx Platform and Azure IoT Hubs, Azure Blob Storage Containers, Azure IoT Devices and Edge Devices, and the Microsoft Azure Industrial IoT (IIoT) Stack for OPC UA.
• Horizontal scalability by adding instances of the ThingWorx Azure IoT Hub Connector and setting up partitions on the Azure IoT Hub to handle increased load. Note that only one Azure IoT Hub is supported for a single Connector.
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The Azure IIoT OPC UA integration requires a Publisher module on an IoT Edge Runtime device for each OPC UA Server. All messages from this Publisher module come from the same device, so all messages are sent to the same partition in the IoT Hub. They go through a single Azure IoT Hub Connector. Adding more than one Azure IoT Hub Connector does not help with horizontal scale if all of your data comes from one OPC UA Server. However, multiple Connectors can help if either of the following are true:
• The customer has more than one OPC UA Publisher sending data.
• Other devices are sending data through the IoT Hub in addition to the OPC UA Publisher.
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• A health check service, logging, and metrics collection enable you to monitor the health of the connection to the ThingWorx Platform in either single-server or clustering mode, as well as the traffic that the platform or cluster is handling. The logging feature provides detailed logs to help in troubleshooting.
• Configuration file to tune settings for the Connector.
• Security for connections to ThingWorx Platform and to Azure IoT and Azure IIoT.
Security
This release of the ThingWorx Azure IoT Hub Connector includes security-related updates, as follows:
• Fixed potential security issues, including items proactively identified by vulnerability scanning software or PTC Quality Assurance testing. Please upgrade as soon as possible to take advantage of these important improvements.
• See the
Release Advisor for important recommendations regarding the use and update of third-party software for ThingWorx.
Extensions Required for ThingWorx Azure IoT Hub Connector 4.3.0
The following table shows the required versions of the extensions for this release of the ThingWorx Azure IoT Hub Connector. These versions are provided in the Connector distribution bundle:
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Extension
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Version
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Notes
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ThingWorx Connection Services Extension (CSE)
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2.2.4
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This version of the CSE is required for use with the Connector 4.3.0 and ThingWorx Platform 9.3.
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ThingWorx Azure IoT Hub Connector Extension
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4.3.0
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This version of the Azure IoT Extension is required for the Connector 4.3.0 and ThingWorx Platform 9.3.
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Additional Software Requirements
The following table lists the additional, required software for this release of the ThingWorx Azure IoT Hub Connector:
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Required Product
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Required Version
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|---|---|---|---|
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Java Development Kit (JDK)
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The compatible versions of the JDKit for this release follow:
• Oracle JDK 11
• Amazon Corretto 11 (Open JDK)
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Linux 64-bit operating system or Windows 64-bit operating system
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Tested on Linux 64-bit version of Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS
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ThingWorx Platform
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9.x
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What’s Changed in ThingWorx Azure IoT Hub Connector 4.3.0
ThingWorx Azure IoT Hub Connector 4.3.0 provides the following new features for the ThingWorx Azure Industrial IoT (IIoT) OPC/UA integration:
ThingWorx Azure Software Content Management (SCM) supported by ThingWorx Azure IoT Hub Connector has ended. For more information, see
End of Life (EOL) ThingWorx Azure Software Content Management.
The following table describes the enhancements and documentation additions for the ThingWorx Azure IoT Hub Connector and for the ThingWorx Azure IIoT OPC UA integration as well as issues fixed in this release:
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ID
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Description
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Enhancements
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AZX-1674, AZX-1725, AZX-1733, AZX-1749, AZX-1757 and AZX-1832
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Stack updates for security
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AZX-1685
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Updated the ThingWorx Microsoft IIoT OPC UA integration to display only the tag name
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AZX-1798
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Updated the Microsoft Azure Industrial IoT (IIoT) stack to the latest approved version. Updated documentation to include upgrade instructions and the change in version.
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AZX-1876
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Updated the help center to reflect the correct supported versions of the OPC-UA offering with Azure IIoT.
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Issues Fixed in This Release
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AZX-1525
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Improved error handling
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AZX-1623
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Fixed an issue where if the Azure IoT Hub Connector gets disconnected from ThingWorx, data would stop being transmitted
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For more information about the Microsoft Azure IoT Hub features, refer to the Microsoft Azure IoT Hub developer guide at
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/guides/developer/azure-developer-guide.
Known Issues
The following table describes the known issues, and where possible, a workaround:
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The Azure IoT Hub Connector does not currently support Azure IoT Hub failover.
Cause: If a failover is initiated for an Azure IoT Hub, the ThingWorx Azure IoT Hub Connector checkpointing does not work. Consequently, for the Azure IIoT OPC UA integration with ThingWorx, telemetry stops working.
Workaround: If this unlikely event occurs, delete the checkpoint files. It is likely that some data loss will occur, but this action will get your Connector running again.
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When using the Microsoft Azure SQL database as the ThingWorx Persistence Provider in the ThingWorx Microsoft IIoT OPC UA integration, property bindings do not work.
Cause:The limitation of index size on Microsoft Azure SQL.
The following error message in the ApplicationLog indicates that the ThingWorx AzureOpcUaPropertyMapDataTable data table is present and the index exceeds the Microsoft Azure SQL limitation on indexes:
Unable to add data table entry because com.thingworx.common.exceptions.DataAccessException: [1,018] Data store unknown error: [Error occurred while accessing the data provider.] Unable to dispatch [ uri = /Things/AzureOpcUaPropertyMapDataTable/Services/AddOrUpdateDataTableEntries/]: Unable to Invoke Service AddOrUpdateDataTableEntries on AzureOpcUaPropertyMapDataTable : java.lang.RuntimeException: com.thingworx.common.exceptions.DataAccessException: [1,018] Data store unknown error: [Error occurred while accessing the data provider.] Workaround: Delete both indexes under configuration on the ThingWorx AzureOpcUaPropertyMapDataTable data table. This deletion requires that you restart the ThingWorx Platform for changes to take effect. For more information, see
Errors When Using Microsoft Azure SQL Database as the ThingWorx Persistence
Provider in the topic,
Troubleshooting the Azure IIoT OPC UA Integration.
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Message ordering is not preserved for a single device.
Although messages are retrieved synchronously from the Azure Event Hub endpoint, messages are dispatched to ThingWorx Platform asynchronously, leading to potential out-of-order application.
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