Why are oBIX and CoAP required together

Question

I am working on a building automation IOT system which has both oBIX and CoAP application to provide web services. As per my knowledge, CoAP layer operates above oBIX handler. Also, some interfaces of oBIX are similar to CoAP.

My query is why oBIX is required? Why oBIX is necessary if CoAP is already available?

Answer 1

In IOT, CoAP is used as a Binding protocol for oBIX interfaces. The oBIX specification provides for bindings using REST (using HTTP or CoAP), SOAP, and WebSocket to talk with web/internet. In many cases, your choice of binding may be dictated by the application needs, such as if you are implementing a server in a constrained environment, or for an enterprise level application.

For CoAP binding following CoAP intefaces are mapped with oBIX requests:

OBIX Request - - HTTP Interfaces
Read - - - - - - - - - GET
Write - - - - - - - - - PUT
Invoke - - - - - - - - POST
Delete - - - - - - - - DELETE