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2020

Your code-first API needs validation

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When you start a project you might tend to do code first API as this is a well-known territory for most developers, especially with frameworks like Spring Boot which use powerful annotations to generate your API and specifications.

In a matter of a few lines, you have a simple CRUD API up and running. But that’s not the end of the story, people need to consume it next. And as they are looking at consuming your API the first thing they will turn to is your documentation, specification, and associated testing UI.

You would think that the code-first approach and auto-generation of your OpenAPI specification got you covered. Sadly most of the time your specification will be invalid.

  • in iot, cloud
  • 9 min read

Bring your OPC-UA tags to the cloud with AWS IoT and Kepware

Today I would like to introduce you to a set of nice functionalities of both Kepware and AWS.

We all have of favorite OPC server depending on the task, but for me, it is Kepware without a doubt. No, I’m not sponsored, I just love it! The nice thing about OPC servers is usually that they cover way more communication protocols and allow us to connect to otherwise non-OPC compatible machines.

Connecting your on-premises OPC server to the cloud

Now with all these collecting capabilities, we need to be able to store, analyze, and display such data. There is of course some powerful tool to do this such as historians like Osi Pi, but what would be nice is if we could set up as a scalable solution within minutes with unlimited integration and that’s where cloud solution comes handy.

Luckily for us, Kepware got us covered and is already providing an IoT Gateway that will allow us to choose tag which should be forwarded to the cloud.

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SiLA 2 going fancy with features

If you have missed the introduction to SiLA 2 please have a look around here: SiLA 2 Hands-on

This will be a more technical article but bear with me as you will gain deeper knowledge about what SiLA 2 is about. I would like to first thank UniteLabs for supporting me in writing this blog series.

Want to skip all the talk and directly see a feature definition? go here

Features! If you should remember one new thing in SiLA 2 I would say that’s it. Features enable you :

to describe your equipment interface precisely to automatically generate the backbone of your server to standardize equipment interface over the industry

What is a feature?

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As abstract as this word may be, here we are talking about a well-defined behavior or ability of laboratory equipment. This image above shows all the components of a feature definition.