In recent years a movement from distributed systems controlled by users to automatic, autonomous and self-configuring distributed systems is noticeable. Web services is one approach but lacking the secure integration of resource-constraint devices.This paper describes the Devices Profile for Web Services (DPWS), underlying protocols and a DPWS toolkit implementation based on C and gSOAP and discuss its current state. It has enormous relevance for embedded systems and industrial automation since DPWS targets resource-constraint devices explicitly, and has the potential to shift the industrial landscape which is characterized of heterogeneous devices.

As the application of the Internet Protocol (IP) is not longer restricted to the internet and computer networks, future IP-based application scenarios require an enormous diversity of heterogeneous platforms and systems. Thereby emerging communication architectures, concepts, technologies and protocols must be capable of handling thousands of devices and communication endpoints on the one hand and be flexible and extensible enough on the other hand, to provide cross domain interoperability independent of platform specific constraints. The Devices Profile for Web Services (DPWS) is such a cross domain technology. This paper provides an overview of DPWS and existing DPWS implementations and toolkits with special focus on the Web Service for Devices (WS4D) initiative. Therefore, features and capabilities of DPWS are described in detail by referring to the open source WS4D implementations. The target platforms are ranging from resource rich server platforms down to highly resource constrained embedded devices.

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