Unified Namespace
Scaling of Industrial IoT solutions requires a Unified Namespace, which acts as a centralized repository of data, information, and context where any application or device can consume or publish data needed for a specific action.
In Industry 3.0, companies created explicit connections between each data source and data consumer. This resulted in a complex spiderweb of connections that required high cost and effort to maintain.
The Unified Namespace eliminates the need for one-to-one connections and replaces thousands of factory-level connections with a single connection to the Unified Namespace repository.
All Industry 4.0 solution needs to be technology driven, and need to support the following in order to be an effective scalable solution:
- Report by exception – that is, only changes are reported.
- Edge driven – that is, the intelligence pushes the payload, it is not polled by consumers.
- Open architecture – that is, all produced data need to be accessible by all consumers.
- Lightweight – that is, communication of data does not take down the network.
MQTT has served as an effective messaging protocol that allows any program or device to publish data. Sparkplug is an open standard built on top of MQTT that defines the message format for Sparkplug-enabled applications. Many industrial systems have adopted the Sparkplug specification with MQTT as a means of integrating systems due to Sparkplug’s prescriptive topic namespace, payload definition, and state management.
Combining MQTT Sparkplug communication with the Unified Namespace results in a solid technology-driven foundation that is easily scalable for all your Digitalization needs.
