An ontology is a set of concepts that are specified in some way (such as specific natural language) to create an agreed-upon vocabulary for exchanging information. The ThingWorx Converge ontology facilitates the creation of applications and integrations that solve business problems.

The ontology contains characteristics and capabilities (thing shapes) that can be used to model resources (for example, Customer or Asset). A particular resource is then described by the relevant capabilities.

The ThingWorx Converge ontology can be extended by customers and the ecosystem.

To access ontology descriptions, in ThingWorx Composer, search for PTC.Capability in the data shapes and thing shapes categories under MODELING.

The Resource Manager provides the application interface for interacting with Resource Providers that communicate with external systems to apply a query, action, or service against its resources. Resource Providers implement the following services: Get, Create, Update, and Delete.

The next diagram shows the Resource Manager and Resource Providers as part of the ThingWorx Converge architecture.

For more information, see Resource Manager.

ThingWorx Converge includes an application and integration software development kit that provides a consistent framework and instructions for application developers, system integrators, and technology providers to develop applications and utilities on top of ThingWorx Converge.

The SDK includes prebuilt components for defining ThingWorx Converge connectors, resource providers, and additional ontology through data properties, services, events, and subscriptions. These components can be used in the utilities provided by ThingWorx Converge and also when creating new mashups. For more information, see Developing on ThingWorx Converge