The W3C Web of Things is a set of standards for describing IoT devices as web resources. Its central artifact, the Thing Description, is a JSON-LD document declaring a device’s properties, actions and events along with the protocols and data formats needed to interact with them — an interface description for a physical thing, playing the role OpenAPI plays for a web API.
W3C Web of Things
The W3C Web of Things is a set of standards for describing IoT devices as web resources. Its central artifact, the Thing Description, is a JSON-LD document declaring a device’s properties, actions and events along with the protocols and data formats needed to interact with them — an interface description for a physical thing, playing the role OpenAPI plays for a web API.
- Thing Description - The deliverable that matters. One document, machine-readable, describing what a device offers and how to reach it.
- Protocol bindings - HTTP, MQTT, CoAP and others, so the description works across the transports IoT actually uses instead of mandating one.
- JSON-LD semantics - Vocabulary terms carry meaning, which is what allows a consumer to reason about an unfamiliar device.
- Architecture and discovery - Companion documents covering how Things are found and how the pieces fit.
WoT is the answer to a question the IoT industry has mostly declined to ask: what would it take for an agent to encounter an unfamiliar device and use it correctly? A Thing Description is exactly the artifact that makes that possible, and the reason it matters more now than when it was published is that agents are the consumers who need it. oneM2M standardised the service layer; WoT standardised the description. Neither has the adoption its design deserves.
Industry: IoT
