WS4D: Toolkits for Networked Embedded Systems Based on the Devices Profile for Web Services

As the application of the Internet Protocol (IP) is not longer restricted to the internet and computer networks, future IP-based application scenarios require an enormous diversity of heterogeneous platforms and systems. Thereby emerging communication architectures, concepts, technologies and protocols must be capable of handling thousands of devices and communication endpoints on the one hand and be flexible and extensible enough on the other hand, to provide cross domain interoperability independent of platform specific constraints. The Devices Profile for Web Services (DPWS) is such a cross domain technology. This paper provides an overview of DPWS and existing DPWS implementations and toolkits with special focus on the Web Service for Devices (WS4D) initiative. Therefore, features and capabilities of DPWS are described in detail by referring to the open source WS4D implementations. The target platforms are ranging from resource rich server platforms down to highly resource constrained embedded devices.