Life|ware™ brings the refinement of control provided by a computer to home automation without requiring that integrators become computer experts to install, configure and maintain it.

An understanding of the basic principles of how Life|ware works and the core standard technologies informing it gives integrators added competence and flexibility to address the variety of scenarios and challenges they encounter in the field.

About Web Services

The term 'Web Services' has been applied to a wide variety of technologies and scenarios in order to describe a system that supports a standard way for applications and machines to interact with each other across a network. Web Services provide benefits to users and developers for three important reasons:

• They embrace W3C standards to be cross-platform and cross-OS compatible.
• They use a distributed application architecture that creates overall system flexibility.
• They have been embraced by a large and active development community.

Benefits of Web Services

• W3C standards
• Distributed computing architecture
• Greater system flexibility
• Active development community
• Robust development tools

What are Web Services for Devices?

Web Services for Devices is a Web Service-based protocol that leverages the latest W3C Web Service standards and the Devices Profile for Web Services (DPWS) specification first proposed in August, 2004. It uses XML to solve the problems of platform and language differences that were hindering the proliferation of distributed computing in the Web domain. Web Services has also evolved the task of finding, connecting to and communicating with components on the network.

The DPWS specification shares a common goal with Universal Plug n' Play (UPnP), an industry initiative dating back to 2000 which sought to enable simple and robust connectivity among stand-alone devices and PCs from many different vendors. However, the UPnP has become dated over the past five years due to standardization of Web Service protocols used in its implementation. As standards like XML and SOAP matured, UPnP did not keep pace. To implement UPnP today requires knowledge of a variety of different and now-dated protocols, and does not take advantage of modern W3C approved standardized protocols.

DPWS provides the foundation for connecting to Web Services-based devices. Devices implemented using DPWS provide services to any application running on any platform and written in any language. Network location and communications are handled by platform technologies, allowing application developers to focus solely on application problems.

Though DPWS is a relatively new specification, Web Services technologies are becoming the predominant computing paradigm for the foreseeable future. Because DPWS is a Web Services implementation, it is 100% compatible with Web Service architecture. Combining the inherent benefits of Web Services with the latest developments in software development platforms and tools creates tremendous technological and business advantages for DPWS over the aging UPnP.

USB-like Plug-n-Play via Ethernet

DPWS delivers true plug-n-play functionality in an Ethernet device-connected environment. DPWS' vision is one of disparate devices made by a variety of vendors communicating seamlessly over a network in which new devices are automatically discovered and configured and made available to applications for use.

For example, DPWS-enabled networked peripherals such as printers or scanners can be detected and put into service by remote users as soon as they are added to the network. With DPWS, the same discovery and configuration process that PC users have embraced when adding a peripheral device locally via USB is now available over a network.

For this reason, many refer to DPWS as "USB for Ethernet." It provides an important and simple new extension of device functionality into the networked environment. What's more, the vast majority of today's existing IT professionals already possess Microsoft-based networking experience to allow them to quickly and easily implement and administer a DPWS solution on their networks.

Benefits of DPWS

• Latest W3C protocols
• Web Services implementation
• Plug-n-Play over Ethernet
• Easily implemented by today's IT professionals

EI's DPWS Stack

The core of the Life|ware system is its DPWS stack — software that leverages Web Services for Devices to create a truly powerful, extensible system that can communicate with a wide variety of devices.

In EI's Life|ware home control software, the DPWS stack creates a powerful, extensible system that can communicate with a wide variety of home control devices such as HVAC, lighting, and distributed audio devices. Exceptional Innovation's DPWS stack converts the programming interface for a controller (such as a security system) or a device (such as a light or audio switcher) into a Web Service Device which can be implemented via the Ethernet connection to the customer's in-home server.

As the first company to implement a DPWS-based control system, Exceptional Innovation has been working proactively to help hardware manufacturers reap the benefits of embedding DPWS into their hardware. Within the world of home automation, several major lighting, security, and audio companies are already embedding the technology into their products, and new requests are coming in consistently. To date, EI has published WSDLs in 14 different classes and has used DPWS to support devices from 27 different manufacturers.

The basic stack includes the code to fully implement the Web Services specification. Additional device-specific code required to implement a device will depend on the complexity of the device interface and the number of devices hosted by a single DPWS server instance. The device-specific code is minimized in our implementation. Today a fairly robust device implementation requires about 80K of memory. While running, the requirement grows to about 500K — including the operating system. This size quote includes a DPWS service with four different classes of device. Basic software requirements of the platform are C runtime support, Sockets and SSL, as well as an OS — Microsoft Windows, Windows CE or an embedded OS.

With active interest and support from hardware manufacturers, Exceptional Innovation has been able to very quickly implement, test and release DPWS stacks for a variety of systems and device types. We continue to work closely with Microsoft to develop DPWS technology for a variety of devices, as well as to further develop DPWS classification standards that apply to Web Services-based devices.

Windows Vista Support

In Vista, DPWS is supported natively as part of the PnP-X specification supported by the OS, or through code generation tools. PnP-X provides an installation experience for network-attached devices that is similar to physically attached devices — i.e., a USB-for-Ethernet-like experience. EI's DPWS continues to work in seamless partnership with Vista.

Working with EI to Adopt DPWS

By embracing Web Services, manufacturers can move away from the limited potential of a proprietary, closed system and include their products in the large and growing world of networked devices which communicate according to standards. Manufacturers interested in capitalizing on the benefits of Web Services can work with Exceptional Innovation to have EI's lightweight DPWS stack incorporated directly into their product.

Contact Exceptional Innovation for more information about Web Services for Devices and the business benefits they represent. Services we provide include WSDL reference documents for each supported device class, consulting services, requirements planning assistance and development services.