The definition of interoperability architectures for intelligent devices using abstract models

Defining the interoperable interface between clients and end-system devices within a distributed control system has become increasingly more difficult. Because the level of intelligence of the devices has increased, multiple vendor implementations may present widely disparate sets of capabilities and interfaces within a single class of devices. Our solution establishes an architecture that defines a common interface to the superset of capabilities for the device class and that provides well-defined mechanisms for understanding subsets of capabilities. The abstract model approach, which we describe, provides a formal methodology for developing such an interoperability architecture. The abstract model can be used to represent all aspects of the device that pertain to its control by a remote client by defining constructs within the model that represent capabilities and by layering the objects in terms of their capabilities and intelligence, the communications between objects within the model can be identified as candidates for interoperable interfaces. The complete abstract model can then be systematically mapped to a communications protocol to define a complete interoperability architecture.