Pretty: a cloud-based presentation and application framework for the web of things

Abstract

This thesis proposes a novel cloud-based presentation and application framework called Pretty, which enables rapid developments and deployments of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) for resource constrained things. The developed RIAs of things, which will be referred to as Web of Things Application/Service or WoT A/S herein, feature direct interaction with individual things on a rich, user-friendly web interface from a web browser. Meanwhile, WoT A/S developers do not need to be familiar with lower-level protocols and hardware technologies. Key challenge in this subject is the resource constraint in physical world, both network condition and devices capability. Moreover, the heterogeneity and complexity of physical devices make the WoT A/S development extremely difficult. This is because WoT A/S usually requires the developers to have a broad range of knowledge from hardware to software and networking. In Pretty framework, thing producers or application developers only need to register their thing profiles into the system. In return, Pretty creates appropriate WoT A/S Template Bundles which are used to build their WoT A/S. The Template Bundle includes a Web Template and an easy-to-use JavaScript Thing API which helps to interact with physical things directly from web browsers. After WoT A/Ss are developed and deployed in to the Pretty system, a resource-distributed architecture is employed to provide RIAs to physical things. In this architecture, static web contents that make up things` rich web interface are stored in dedicated network entities called Presentation Servers (PS), which are actually virtual instances in Pretty`s cloud system. Then with Thing API, data from physical object is retrieved and displayed on top of this web interface, either by performing an Ajax XMLHttpRequest to the object or by communicating with CoAP protocol. By doing this, Pretty framework provides RIAs to even the most constrained things. The system is built on SNAIL (Sensor Netw...