1. Developing Applications with Oracle Internet of Things Cloud Service
  2. Create and Manage Connectors
  3. About Connectors

About Connectors

Connectors provides connectivity from Oracle Internet of Things Cloud Service to devices that are part of a third-party cloud service, follow a proprietary protocol, or have a network provider that uses a long range (LoRa) network for wireless communication.

Typically, you can choose one of four methods to connect a device to Oracle Internet of Things Cloud Service.

The image illustrates the four types of device connectivity.

Description of connection_types.eps follows
Description of the illustration connection_types.eps

A connector enables IP devices to directly connect to Oracle Internet of Things Cloud Service without using an Oracle IoT Client Software Library. It also lets non-IP devices indirectly connect to Oracle Internet of Things Cloud Service through a third-party cloud service offered by the network provider.

Features and Functionality

A connector lies in between an Oracle Internet of Things Cloud Service instance and an external system such as a third-party cloud service that manages different devices.

It can perform the following tasks:

  • Obtain metadata and telemetry data from devices

  • Map metadata with a device model and transform proprietary message payloads to a format compatible with Oracle Internet of Things Cloud Service

  • Register device types and activate devices that need to be integrated with Oracle Internet of Things Cloud Service

Connectors support HTTPS and MQTTS protocols. It has an HTTP server connector that accepts POST REST operations to receive device messages. It also has a MQTT client connector that subscribes for device messages from an MQTT broker. Both HTTP and MQTT based connectors may use HTTP to query additional details about devices from a remote service.

Connectors provides the following features:

  • A core set of connectivity functionality: The functionality can identify devices, register or on-board them, receive messages from the devices, and also manage the interpreter.

  • A consistent runtime environment: It instantiates the connector and provides wrapper services within the environment.

  • The ability to start, stop, scale, and manage the runtime: It enables users to start and stop the connectors from the standard Oracle Internet of Things Cloud Service user interface. Because connectors can effectively scale the runtime environment, users can create and run multiple instances of connectors simultaneously.

  • The ability to query user for configuration information : The user is prompted to enter the required configuration information to run the connector.

  • The ability to query user for input or action at runtime: Connectors allow to query the user for input. For example, during machine type on-boarding, it prompts the user to input or select the device type fields. This allows the connectors to include the specified fields when the device type is on-boarded.