Asset Muting
Muting an asset on Axeda Platform stops all communication between the asset and the Platform. All incoming messages from the asset will be dropped, and the Platform will internally drop any egress messages destined for the asset. It is important to not that the asset is not aware that it has been muted.
In addition, note these behaviors when assets are muted on Axeda Platform:
• Asset token validation is always successful and does not change if an asset is muted.
• If all the gateways associated with a managed asset are currently muted, that managed asset is also muted.
• Muted assets are not added to package deployments.
• Muted assets can still be interacted with via Scripto calls.
ThingWorx Platform does not have the concept of asset muting. Instead, it provides the ability to enable or disable an asset. While similar in some respects to asset muting, the enable/disable state of a Thing is not a replacement for asset muting. Note too that certain services are always available for Things, whether or not they are enabled. In particular, the IsEnabled service provides access to the enable/disable state, allowing users to flip the state from enabled to disabled or from disabled to enabled.
A disabled asset will know that it has been disabled when it attempts to use a service that is not “always available,” such as updating a property. Disabling an asset is effectively “turning it off” on the server, which is very different from muting. Changing the enabled state of a Thing does not trigger events.
When an asset is disabled in ThingWorx, the asset cannot
• Be activated.
• Dispatch events.
• Process incoming events.
• Be exported.
• Be started or stopped through ThingWorx Platform.
• Activate property bindings.
• Run scheduled events.
• Updated property values. An error is visible to the Thing (“<Thingname> is not enabled”).
Disabled ValueStreamThings cannot add entries to the stream.
Disabled Things CAN process service requests for services that are always available and allow editing of an entity. The following services are always available:
• EnableThing
• IsEnabled
• RestartThing
• SetDataShape
• GetConfigurationChangeHistory
• GetSummaryInformation
• GetThingSummaryInformation
• GetConfigurationTable
• GetConfigurationTableRow
• SetConfigurationTable
• SetConfigurationTableRows
Enabling a disabled Thing does not in itself restore the previous state. The Thing will not be running and must be restarted, using the RestartThing generic service (which is “always available”). The ThingState (an ENUM property) moves from ON to DISABLED when the DisableThing service is used, and then from DISABLED to OFF on EnableThing.