Understand AnythingDB Beta

Altair SmartWorks AnythingDB Beta enables you to create digital models of the assets that define your smart connected ecosystem.

AnythingDB Beta follows the Web of Things (WoT) standards defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for the interoperability of different IoT platforms and application domains.

AnythingDB Beta contains following features:

  1. Every Thing: enables you to define the entities in the smart connected ecosystem
  2. Models: templates to ease the process of defining new Things
  3. Structure: group your Assets (Things) in a logical way and define relations between them
  4. Custom Queries: perform custom queries in your database

In this tutorial you will define a single device, so only the Every Thing section will be used.

AnythingDB Beta - Every Thing

In this section you can define the virtual digital representations of any Asset for your smart connected ecosystem.

Things

Things represent the entities in the smart connected ecosystem and store information about them. Based on the Web of Things (WoT), Things can be defined through JSON formatting based on Properties, Actions, and Events.
Detail Description
Properties Describe the Thing's attributes (e.g., sensor values, configuration parameters, status, results of an analysis)
Actions Determine how you can interact with your Thing (e.g., change a property, turn on/off)
Events Monitor the changes that can modify a Thing’s property (e.g., fire alarm, door open, data streams)
In this tutorial, you will create the virtual digital representation of a temperature sensor with the following attributes:
Detail Description
Properties
  • ID [type:string]
  • Temperature value [type:number]
  • Location [type:object]
    • Latitude
    • Longitude
Actions Reboot
Events High Temperature

Create a Thing

  1. In AnythingDB Beta > Every Thing, click + New Thing.


  2. Enter the title as temperature_sensor and click Create.


    Figure 1.
    The Details panel opens.
  3. Scroll the bottom of the Details panel, to view the empty Properties, Actions, Events and Links section.


    Figure 2.
  4. Create the Properties:
    1. Click the + buttons next to Properties, enter the Property Key as ID and the Type as string and click Create.
    2. Create a second Property with Property Key as temperature_value and Type as number and click Create.
    3. Create a third Property with Property Key as location and Type as number and click Create.
      The location Property is created, and you'll see a small appear next to the name.
    4. Click the icon and add an attribute called latitude and Type as number and click Create.
    5. Add another attribute called longitude.
  5. Create the Actions:
    1. Click the + button next to Action. Enter the Key as Reboot and the Input Type as object.
  6. Create the Events:
    1. Click the + button next to Events. Enter the Key as High Temperature and the Event Data Type as object.