Be sure to check out the 1-page flyer for the 
Smart City Toolbox, FIWARE-based!
This section presents the components that are part of the FIWARE Toolbox. During the project, existing FIWARE Generic Enablers, components from other projects and new components have been integrated into the European instantiation of the CPaaS.io platform. Some of the existing components have been enhanced to address requirements needed by users and developers. Most software in the platform is available as open-source projects and can be freely downloaded. Those components will be sustained through GitHub services, which means that issues and new features can be handled by the community. In addition to being open source, components found in the FIWARE Catalogue are strongly supported and promoted by FIWARE foundation and its members (organisations and individuals). FIWARE also provides a complete set of resources to users and developers, including tutorials, courses, repositories and test environments. Please also consult the Deployment White Paper for more information on how to deploy a CPaaS.io landscape of components.
Below is a short overview of the components enhanced or newly developed by CPaaS.io:
| Component | Short Description |
|---|---|
| IoT Broker | The IoT Broker is specified as a lightweight and scalable middleware component that separates IoT applications from the underlying device installations. This implementation satisfies all properties described in the FIWARE specification of the IoT Generic Enabler (GE). Links:
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| ConfMan | The NEC Configuration Management or NEC ConfMan is an implementation of the FIWARE IoT Discovery Generic Enabler. This implementation is specifically designed to interwork with the IoT Broker GE FIWARE reference implementation, serving as the registry of FIWARE NGSI context providers. Links:
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| IoT Knowledge Server | The IoT Knowledge Server adds semantic information into NGSI messages and enhance these NGSI messages with semantic reasoning. IoT Knowledge Server component has an internal triple-store where NGSI (or other) ontologies are kept. It serves semantic knowledge such as entity subtypes or supertypes and provides high-level access to the semantic ontologies via query/subscription functionalities. Links: |
| Orion Context Broker | Orion is a C++ implementation of the NGSIv2 REST API binding developed as part of the FIWARE platform. Orion Context Broker allows to manage the entire lifecycle of context information including updates, queries, registrations and subscriptions. It is an NGSIv2 server implementation to manage context information and its availability. Using the Orion Context Broker interfaces, clients can run operations like: (i) update and query context information; (ii) register context producer applications; (iii) being notified when changes on context information take place. Links:
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| FogFlow | Orion is a C++ implementation of the NGSIv2 REST API binding developed as part of the FIWARE platform. Orion Context Broker allows to manage the entire lifecycle of context information including updates, queries, registrations and subscriptions. It is an NGSIv2 server implementation to manage context information and its availability. Using the Orion Context Broker interfaces, clients can run operations like: (i) update and query context information; (ii) register context producer applications; (iii) being notified when changes on context information take place. Links: |
| NGSI-LD Broker | The NGSI-LD Broker is a middleware component that implements the new NGSI-LD API for Context Information Management. NGSI-LD has been standardized by the ETSI Industry Specification Group for cross-cutting Context Information Management (ISG CIM). A preliminary version of the specification has been released in April 2018, and a final version submitted to the ETSI board in December 2018. It defines a standard API that enables close to real-time access to information coming from many different sources. NGSI-LD is the evolution of the NGSI v1 and NGSI v2 interfaces that are currently implemented by ConfMan, IoT Broker, and FIWARE Context Broker. The NGSI-LD Broker is still under development and it is expected to have an initial release in early 2019. |
| Deployment Knowledge Base | The Deployment Knowledge Base is a tool for managing the deployment of IoT Devices. It covers an inventory for managing IoT Devices and sensors and allows IoT deployment managers to plan a deployment of physical devices including a description (location, time, floor plan) of deployments. The tool supports both the deployment of static and mobile devices, and associations of mobile devices with people and other physical entities can be managed. The data generated by this tool can be used for metadata enrichment of raw data and analytic results. The deployment knowledge base exposes a SPARQL endpoint and has a web-based front end. Deployment metadata created by the tool instantiates a deployment ontology extending the semantic sensor network (SSN) ontology and it is stored as RDF triples in a triple store (deployment knowledge base) within the platform. |
| NGSI to RDF Mapper | This component maps NGSI data model instances to RDF triples and inserts them in the CPaaS.io Semantic Data repository. The component understands NGSI 10 notifications and updates the Semantic data repository accordingly. This enables the semantic integration between the European FIWARE-based and Japanese U2-based CPaaS.io instance. It also provides a common semantic data integration layer for any other non-FIWARE based IoT Platforms. For instance, AGT’s own IoTA platform offers via its World Graph a rich semantic representation of dynamic and complex physical environments. With the NGSI to RDF mapping service, IoTA is interoperable with the NGSI standard and FIWARE implementations. NGSI to RDF Mapper is a proprietary component and it is sustained by AGT. |
| STH Comet | The Short Time Historic (STH, aka. Comet) is a component of the FIWARE ecosystem in charge of managing (storing and retrieving) historical raw and aggregated time series information about the evolution in time of context data (i.e., entity attribute values) registered in an Orion Context Broker instance. All the communications between the STH and the Orion Context Broker as well as between the STH and any third party (typically for data retrieval) use standardized NGSI9 and NGSI10 interfaces. Links:
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| Security Components | The security components for CPaaS.io include KeyRock, the component responsible for identity management in FIWARE, XACML including a PAP (Policy Administration Point) and a PDP (Policy Decision Point), and the PEP-Proxy. Links:
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| LoRaWAN to NGSI-10 bridge | This bridge listens to incoming messages on LoRaWAN applications and transforms them into NGSI-10 format using TTN device and decoder API. The new formatted message is then sent to a pre-configured URL, which is an IoT Broker instance most of the time. It also allows to contact devices by sending formatted messages to a call back URL defined by TTN or the application user. Additionally to the bridge, a HTTP proxy dedicated to the WaterProof application has been also provided. This proxy simplifies the connection and the message format for the WaterTank connected to the platform. |
| Grafana Plugin | For data visualisation, Grafana is a powerful and freely available tool. In order to be able to use it in the context of the CPaaS.io project, we have written an NGSI-plugin for Grafana, as data can only be retrieved from the CPaaS.io platform using NGSI. Links: |
A further overview can also be found in the presentation from the final review meeting in February 2019: