Integrations
What is oBIX?
oBIX (Open Building Information Exchange) is a web-services standard for reading building automation data over HTTP. In buildings, you meet it most often as the service a Tridium Niagara station exposes.
oBIX is an OASIS standard, first published in 2006, that puts building automation data behind an ordinary web interface. A BMS exposes its objects as XML over HTTP, and any authorised client reads them with plain web requests. Version 1.1, the current release, arrived in 2015.
How it works. An oBIX server publishes an object tree that starts at a node called the lobby. Everything is self-describing: each object declares its type through a contract, so a client can discover what a point means without a register map. Clients read points (a value plus its status), query histories (time-sampled data) and receive alarms. Watches let a client subscribe to a set of points and poll one URL for changes instead of asking every object in turn. Because it all runs over HTTP, the data crosses networks the way any web service does.
oBIX and Niagara. The reason oBIX matters in practice: Tridium's Niagara Framework ships an oBIX driver as standard, both client and server. Enable the server on a station or supervisor and the points, histories, alarms and schedules it knows become readable over HTTP, without touching the wire sheet. That makes oBIX the natural read path out of a Niagara estate, whether the stations are Honeywell WEBs or third-party JACEs.
Where oBIX fits. oBIX never displaced the field protocols and was never meant to. BACnet and Modbus live on the automation network, device to device. oBIX sits a level up, handing the supervisor's picture of the building to enterprise software.
| Protocol | Governed by | Style | Where you meet it |
|---|---|---|---|
| oBIX | OASIS | XML over HTTP web services | Niagara stations and supervisors |
| BACnet | ASHRAE | Building automation objects, IP or MS/TP | Most modern BMS |
| OPC UA | OPC Foundation | Secure client/server information model | Industrial and newer building systems |
| Modbus | Modbus Organization | Numbered registers, serial or TCP | Meters and legacy plant |
How FrostLogic reads oBIX. The FrostLogic Edge Agent speaks oBIX natively. It installs on the BMS PC or server, reads points and histories from the station's oBIX service, and pushes the data read-only to Explore. No wire-sheet changes, and no BMS cloud licence. The same agent covers BACnet, OPC UA and Modbus, so a mixed estate lands in one model either way.
Before you ask
oBIX, the common questions.
Open Building Information Exchange. It's an OASIS standard from 2006 for exposing building automation data as web services, XML over HTTP.
No. BACnet is how devices talk to each other on the automation network. oBIX sits above that, as a web interface for handing the supervisor's picture of the building to other software. Plenty of Niagara estates run both at once.
No. The oBIX service runs on the station itself, locally. The FrostLogic Edge Agent reads it on site and pushes the data read-only to Explore, so estates with no BMS cloud subscription connect fine.
Points with their live values and status, histories of trended data, and alarms. Niagara stations also expose schedules. That covers what analytics needs: what the building is doing now and what it did before.
Yes, natively. The FrostLogic Edge Agent connects to the station's oBIX service, reads points and histories, and pushes them read-only to Explore. First findings typically land within the first week of data flowing.
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