Azure Industrial IoT (IIoT)

Microsoft Industrial IoT enables users to discover OPC UA enabled servers in a factory network, register them in an Azure IoT Hub, and collect telemetry from them. For complete information, refer to the Microsoft document on the Helm Hub, Azure Industrial IoT.

Connector

An application server that provides two basic functionalities, protocol adapter and communications channels. The protocol adapter component of the ThingWorx Azure IoT Hub Connector translates messages from edge devices connecting to an Azure IoT Hub into ThingWorx AlwaysOn protocol messages and forwards them to a ThingWorx Platform instance. It also translates AlwaysOn messages and forwards them to the Azure IoT Hub, which sends them on to the edge devices.

When the Azure IoT Hub is used to collect OPC UA data from an OPC UA server, the Azure IoT Hub Connector translates the messages from the OPC UA format to the AlwaysOn format for incoming messages (ingress). For outgoing messages (egress), the Connector translates AlwaysOn messages to the format of the target devices. For OPC UA clients, it translates messages to OPC UA format.

The ThingWorx eMessage Connector translates messages from a PTC Axeda eMessage Agent (the Axeda Gateway or Axeda Connector agent) to AlwaysOn messages and forwards them to a ThingWorx Platform instance. It also translates AlwaysOn messages from the platform into eMessage protocol messages and forwards them to the agent.

Discovery Url

Discovery URL is an OPC UA term. Every OPC UA Server has an endpoint that can be used to discover other UA endpoints. Every UA Server can expose multiple UA endpoints. In the ThingWorx mashup for configuring OPC UA applications, you provide an address that Microsoft Edge modules can use to discover information about the application that you are configuring.

Industrial Connection

A ThingWorx entity that represents an OPC UA endpoint and its tags in ThingWorx. You can create new Industrial Connection Things in ThingWorx Composer.

C2D

An abbreviation for "Cloud-to_Device". When used in the context of messages, it describes messages sent from a cloud, such as Azure IoT or PTC Cloud Services, to an Edge device.

D2C

An abbreviation for "Device-to-Cloud". When used in the context of messages, it describes messages sent from an Edge device to an IoT Cloud, such as Azure IoT or PTC Cloud Services.

Helm Chart

A Helm package that contains all of the resource definitions that are needed to run an application in an Azure Kubernetes cluster. Helm installs charts into Kubernetes. Each installation creates a new release, which has its own release name. To find charts, you can search the Helm repository.

Helm Repository

A place where charts are collected and shared. For more information about Helm, refer to Using Helm.

Layered Deployment

The OPC Publisher is pre-packaged by Microsoft into a docker container that is deployed to edge devices and then executed in the IoT Edge Runtime, which manages a collection of docker containers. The term "layered deployment" describes the operating environment of those docker containers.

Properties

For data points sent to ThingWorx from the Edge, ThingWorx uses the term properties. In OPC UA, you know the data points as tags.

Telemetry

The collection of data such as measurements of temperature, pressure, or fluid levels at remote locations and the transmission of the data to receiving systems for monitoring. Collected on factory floors, OPC UA data is an example of telemetry.

OPC UA

Released in 2008, the OPC Unified Architecture (UA) is a platform-independent, service-oriented architecture that facilitates the exchange of information for industrial communications. For a quick video, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tDGzwsBokY. This video also leads to the Kepware Introduction to OPC Communications webinar, which you can access directly at this address: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6E9uAtyhow.