July 2014 Community Update

Submitted by Lacey Rae on Tue, 07/29/2014 - 06:13

RTI Community Newsletter

RTI Community Updates

July 2014

State of the Community - Good Things Come in Threes.
Lacey Rae Trebaol, Engineer + Community Manager

Usually when I sit down to write this, it’s quite straightforward because I have one very important thing to share with you all, and while a smattering of other things may have happened, they don’t reach the level of being newsletter material. This time? I realized that there were three things - not one - three. So without further adieu, I present to you the three big things you need to know about:

#1 We launched RTI Connext DDS Secure!
Security is kind of a big deal to you, and to us as well. We get it. And we’re not just saying that so you’ll pick us. We’re saying that because we mean it, and to back it up? Exhibit A: RTI Connext DDS Secure. It’s the first ever implementation of the OMG DDS Security Specification, years in the making, and we’re excited. To learn more, visit the Connext DDS Secure product page and be sure to check out this blog post, browse the OMG security spec, and flip through this SlideShare presentation.

#2 New Case + Code: Medical Device Integration

Network medical devices and give them smarter algorithms so hospital staff can make better care decisions and improve patient safety. Our newest Case + Code use case helps you build your own system of connected healthcare devices with a detailed written tutorial, multiple YouTube videos, and coding examples. Take a look!

#3 Happy 25th, OMG!
OMG celebrated their 25th last month the Boston meeting. There was a large crowd on hand to celebrate as meetings for the DDS technical standard and the Industrial Internet Consortium were taking place this week. To hear more about the decisions made at those meetings, read Gerardo’s OMG update (below).

Forum News
Gerardo Pardo, CTO

Forum views have been going up through the roof recently! The Streaming Video data over DDS thread already surpassed 5000 views! Less than 1 month old, How to specify content-filters using XML? passed 10000 views. Both pale in comparison with the 30000+ views already gathered by Complex Types in RTI Prototyper with Lua. Wow!

I would attribute this to good technical content addressing practical questions on how to use DDS all driven by community experts and members. If you are not participating yet you may be missing some real insights and the ability to impact the product direction… I really encourage you to be active and post your questions and comments!

OMG News
Gerardo Pardo, CTO

The June 2014 meeting was held in Boston the week of June 16-20. The Omni hotel provided a nice venue in the heart of downtown. The meeting was very well attended, especially given the co-location of the Industrial Internet Consortium meeting. This made for very lively receptions and a great audience to RTI’s Lunch Keynote presentation on “Why is DDS the right technology for the Industrial Internet?” :)

In the meeting the Data Distribution Service (DDS) version 1.4 was approved! Technically it is a small update to DDS version 1.2. The big (and only) difference is that the DLRL part was taken out of the specification and placed on a separate document (DDS-DLRL). Thus the resulting DDS specification is more concise and clean. The DDS 1.5 revision task force (RTF) was chartered chaired by RTI. The goal will be to address the issues that were submitted over the years. As there are no active implementations of DLRL there was no RTF chartered for it.

Breaking news: Finally some consensus emerging around the RPC over DDS specification!! Three months ago at the Washington meeting an evaluation team presented their evaluation of the RTI/eProsima submission and how it compared to the competing one from PrismTech. The report mostly aligned with the RTI/eProsima submission and included recommendations on how to simplify it. RTI/eProsima submitted and presented a revision in Boston that aligned with the evaluation team recommendations and PrimsTech chose to not submit and instead stated they intend to join the RTI-led submission. The RTI/eProsima was also joined by TwinOaks computing (implementors of CoreDX, a leading small-footprint DDS). All this clears the stage for adopting the RTI-led submission. The date for the date for the final submission has been pushed to December 2014 to provide time for additional reviews by the newly-joined submitters.

The MARS meeting featured presentations on the Unified Component Model (UCM) RFC responses. This seems a very popular topic. There were 4 separate initial submissions: AIST, Remedy, THALES, and RTI. There is significant community of intent, if not approach, and a real desire to consolidate the best ideas into a joined submission. This will be a significant undertaking.

Guest Post: Accellerating the IoT: Adding Security in Legacy Systems
Geoff Revill

For the most part, the Industrial Internet aspect of the IoT won’t happen until we can figure out a way to build security into legacy deployed systems. There is trillions of dollars of deployed systems that essentially rely on physical security measures, replacing these systems with shiny new cyber-ready systems will take decades. Accessing their wealth of data via the Internet is a major security challenge – few of these systems were designed to be secured against cyber attack. So the wealth of shareable sensor data and industrial insights remains locked in proprietry system deployments. In many cases that’s just the way the owners like it, and for many there is no real reason – yet – to open up their systems to the Internet. But the innovative large scale entities that find ways to open up their systems could unlock a mobile-like app phenomena – becoming the Apple or Google of the IoT age. It’ll take a bold move by an even bolder entity to do this, but with high risks come high rewards. And if they don’t, be assured Apple or Google or similar will gradually encroach on that Industrial home turf.....read more.

Hiring starts with Awareness!
Jan Van Bruaene, VP Engineering

Finding folks who are great at what they do and most importantly who love what they do is not an easy task. This is especially true in Silicon Valley, where we are surrounded by both the big boys like Google, Yahoo and LinkedIn, as well as the startups with yet to be built technology and unproven business models. One of our biggest challenges in recruiting new engineering talent is awareness. Once folks can learn how our small software company has in the world of the industrial internet, and how they can impact us, convincing them to join RTI is a whole lot easier.

I am excited that several new engineers and interns have been joining us. We are still looking for a few specific skills to join the team: security, research and system administration. Let us know if you like to help build the communications platform for the industrial internet of things. And help spread the word among you friends and colleagues. You, our community, has the best contacts to build great infrastructure software.

community.rti.com