Knowledge
is empowering.
IoT and IIoT Glossary – more knowledge

Glossary of industrieal IoT (IIoT) terms

No other industry uses as many technical terms as in IT / ITK. What terms are used regularly in IT / ITK and what do they mean? Is there a special IoT vocabulary that you should know and need for a good understanding? We have compiled a list of the most important technical terms and explain their meaning.

Glossary of industieal IoT (IIoT) systems and their technical terms

Overview

 
  1. adaptive
    Easy to adopt in case of changes or enhancements
     
     
    German: adaptiv
  2. agile
    Kind of working in an short period fashion
     
     
    German: agil
  3. Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI)
    Application Centric Infrastructure
     
  4. Application Programming Interface (API)
    An interface for developers
     
  5. automation
    Fully automatic handling instead of error prone human handling
     
     
    German: Automatisierung
  6. Business Continuity Management (BCM)
    Concept to avoid operational disruptions or total failures
     
     
    Siehe auch: Emergency Revovery
     
    German: Betriebliches Kontinuitätsmanagement (BKM)
  7. black box
    A part of an application, which does work in an unknown fassion
     
     
    German: Black-Box
  8. Building Automation and Control Networks (BACnet)
    xxx
     
  9. cluster
    An interacting group of systems
     
  10. Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR)
    The Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) is a data format whose design goals include the possibility of extremely small code size, fairly small message size, and extensibility without the need for version negotiation.
     
  11. Constrained Application Protocol
    Constrained Application Protocol
     
    The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is a specialized web transfer protocol for use with constrained nodes and constrained networks in the Internet of Things. The protocol is designed for machine-to-machine (M2M) applications such as smart energy and building automation.
     
    German: Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)
  12. Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
    Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery
     
    Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, Continuous Deployment
  13. Deep Learning (DL)
    Deep Learning
     
     
    Siehe auch:
  14. decentalised
    When services or functionality is locally provided
     
     
    German: dezentral
  15. Digital Twin
    Digital Twin
     
     
    German: Digitaler Zwilling
  16. digitizion
    Providing a digital sibling for all real objects
     
     
    German: Digitalisierung
  17. Direct Number Control (DNC)
    An interface for computer control of CNC maschines
     
  18. Distributed Control System (DCS)
    Modern standard widely employed to control industrial machines electronically
     
  19. Edge
    A special way of data processing at the edge of the company.
     
  20. Emergency recovery
    A digital disaster recovery technique
     
    Typically after a widespread virus attack, a successful attack by a crypto Trojan horse or a cyber attack. It is assumed that all digital systems have to be completely rebuilt.
  21. Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM)
    Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM)
     
    Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM)
  22. ETS
    ETS is the programming software for KNX / EIB system
     
    KNX ETS Software
  23. Event Driven Architecture (EDA)
    Event Driven Architecture
     
  24. EventBus
    A kind (loosely coupled) communication by messages between components
     
     
    German: Event-Bus
  25. Far UV-C
    Fern UV-C
     
     
    German: Fern UV-C
  26. Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)
    Field Programmable Gate Array
     
  27. General-purpose input/output (GPIO)
    general-purpose input/output
     
  28. grid
    An interacting group of systems
     
  29. Homekit
    Apple Homekit
     
  30. Human Centric Lightning (HCL)
    Generic term for lighting adapted to human needs (bright white light in the morning, warm light dimmed in the evening)
     
  31. Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI)
    Hyper-converged infrastructure
     
    Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI)
     
    German: Hyperkonvergente Infrastrukturen (HCI)
  32. Industry 4.0
    Digitaization of the industry
     
     
    German: Industrie 4.0
  33. Industrial Computer Systems (ICS)
    PC for industrial usage
     
     
    German: Industrie PC (ICS)
  34. open (ITC)
    An abroviation for IT and communication. Mostly prefered in producing environments
     
     
    German: Informations- und Kommunikationstechnik (ITK)
  35. information technolgy (IT)
    A term for all kind of systems and components which are used for information and data handling
     
     
    German: Informationstechnik (IT)
  36. infrastructure repository (ISR)
    A central datastore, where the setting is been stored for all kind of systems and components
     
     
    German: Infrastruktur Repository (ISR)
  37. International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)
    International Electrotechnical Commission is a standard for ...
     
  38. Internet of Things (IoT)
    A term for all kind of systems and machines which are communicating between the internet
     
  39. interoperability
    interoperability
     
     
    German: Interoperabilität
  40. Configuration Management (CM)
    Kind of working in an short period fashion
     
    a) b)
     
    German: Konfigurationsmanagement (KM)
  41. Legacy
    A legacy software ore system is a older / longer used software or system
     
  42. level of control
    Level of automation
     
    There are 5 levels auf automation:
    • Level 1: Remote Control
    • Level 2: Programmed Sequences (Macros)
    • Level 3: Conditional Control
    • Level 4: Interactive
    • Level 5: Self-learning
  43. Optical Fiber (LWL)
    Optical fiber
     
     
    German: Lichtwellenleiter (LWL)
  44. lock-in
    vendor lock-in
     
  45. loose coupling
    When software components are coupled by just exchanging messages and events
     
    Instead of a "hard" software link between components.
     
    German: lose Kopplung
  46. Manufacturing Execution System (MES)
    Manufacturing Execution System (MES)
     
    Manufacturing Execution System (MES)
  47. Machine Learning (ML)
    Machine Learning
     
     
    See also: , and
     
    German: Maschinelles Learnen (ML)
  48. Human Maschine Interface (HMI)
    German: MMS (Mensch-Maschine-Schnittstelle)
     
     
    German: Mensch-Maschine-Schnittstelle (MMS)
  49. Instrumentation Control Automation (ICA)
    Instrumentation Control Automation
     
    Instrumentation Control Automation (ICA)
     
    German: Mess-, Steuerungs- und Regelungstechnik (MSR)
  50. micro service
    xxxx
     
    IT term for small business oriented parts of a software service
     
    German: Microservice
  51. monolithic
    Single and locally operating system
     
     
    German: monolitisch
  52. MQ Telemetry Transport (MQTT)
    MQTT is an open OASIS and ISO standard for interconnecting devices via publish-subscribe
     
    MQTT: What is QoS (Quality Of Service)? The Quality of Service (QoS) level is an agreement between the sender of a message and the receiver of a message that defines the guarantee of delivery for a specific message. There are 3 QoS levels in MQTT: QoS 0 (at most once): This service level guarantees a best-effort delivery. There is no guarantee of delivery. QoS 1 (at least once): This service level guarantees that a message is delivered at least one time (> 1) to the receiver. QoS 2 (exactly once): This level guarantees that each message is received only once by the intended recipients. QoS 2 is the safest and slowest quality of service level. MQTT: What is the Retain Flag? A retained message is a normal MQTT message with the retained flag set to true. The broker stores the last retained message and the corresponding QoS for that topic. Each client that subscribes to a topic pattern that matches the topic of the retained message receives the retained message immediately after they subscribe. The broker stores only one retained message per topic. MQTT: What is the Client ID? The client identifier (ClientId) identifies each MQTT client that connects to an MQTT broker. The broker uses the ClientID to identify the client and the current state of the client. Therefore, this ID should be unique per client and broker. MQTT: What is the Clean Session flag? The clean session flag tells the broker whether the client wants to establish a persistent session or not. In a persistent session (CleanSession = false), the broker stores all subscriptions for the client and all missed messages for the client that subscribed with a Quality of Service (QoS) level 1 or 2. If the session is not persistent (CleanSession = true), the broker does not store anything for the client and purges all information from any previous persistent session. MQTT: What is the Last Will and Testament (LWT)? In MQTT, you use the Last Will and Testament (LWT) feature to notify other clients about an ungracefully disconnected client. Each client can specify its last will message when it connects to a broker. The last will message is a normal MQTT message with a topic, retained message flag, QoS, and payload. The broker stores the message until it detects that the client has disconnected ungracefully. In response to the ungraceful disconnect, the broker sends the last-will message to all subscribed clients of the last-will message topic. MQTT: Where is my LWT topic? The LWT messages will always be sent to (prefix)/(domainName)/(machineName)/lwt topic
  53. Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)
    Multiprotocol Label Switching
     
  54. Natural Language Processing (NLP)
    A form of AI for understanding text (spoken or spoken)
     
    Deals with understanding natural language. And is made up of the two subcategories Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Natural Language Generation (NLG).
     
    See also: , and
  55. Network access control
    Network access control
     
     
    German: Netzzugangskontrolle (NAC)
  56. Neural Processing Unit (NPU)
    Neural Processing Unit
     
     
    Siehe auch:
  57. Object Linking and Embedding for Process Control (OPC)
    OPC Standard
     
  58. Observability
    Observability
     
  59. open
    An interface or program which can be used and enriched by everybody
     
     
    German: offen
  60. Open Containers Initiative (OCI)
    Open Containers Initiative (OCI)
     
  61. Operational Technology (OT)
    Operational Technology
     
    Wikipedia Focepoint
  62. Predictive Maintenance (PM)
    Predictive Maintenance (PM)
     
    Predictive Maintenance (PM)
  63. Privileged Access Management  (PAM)
    Privileged Access Management
     
    xxx
  64. Product Data Management (PDM)
    Product Data Management
     
    Product Data Management
  65. Production planing and control (PPS)
    xxx
     
     
    German: Produktionsplanung und -steuerung (PPS)
  66. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)
    Product Lifecycle Management
     
    Product Lifecycle Management
     
    German: Produktlebenszyklusmanagement (PLM)
  67. Profinet
    Profinet
     
  68. proprietary
    Vendor dependent lock instead of an open and standardized technology or system
     
     
    German: proprietär
  69. Publish/Subscribe
    Publish/Subscribe
     
  70. redundancy
    Redundancy
     
     
    German: Redundanz
  71. Reference Architecture Model for Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0)
     
  72. terminal blocks
    A terminal block is an electric mounting point, for cable installation purpose
     
     
    German: Reihenklemmen
  73. Reinforcement Learning (RL)
    Reinforcement Learning
     
     
    See also: , und
  74. representational state transfer (REST)
    A de facto standard for using IT-services over HTTP/HTTPS
     
  75. Residual Current Device (RCD)
    Residual Current Device
     
  76. Retrofit
    Retrofit
     
    Retrofit
  77. Robotic Operation System (ROS)
    Robotic Operation System
     
    How to overcome common ROS 2 challenges. How and why to tune the ROS 2 system with Yocto-based Linux. Has archived a projected market value of $37 billion during 2019–2021 (Association for Advancing Automation)
  78. Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
    Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
     
  79. layer
    Applications and their data flow are divided into different technical horizontal parts
     
     
    German: Schichten
  80. Service-Level-Agreement (SLA)
    Service-Level-Agreement (SLA)
     
    Service-Level-Agreement (SLA)
  81. Single Board Computer (SBC)
    Single board computer
     
  82. smart cluster
    A group of loosely coupled modules, which are working like on intelligent piece
     
  83. smart grid
    A connected group of mostly electrical components which can be easily reoganized
     
  84. Software Defined Networks (SDN)
    Software Defined Networks (SDN)
     
  85. programmable logic controller (PLC)
    A programmable logic controller
     
     
    German: Speicherprogrammierbare Steuerung (SPS)
  86. standard
    A clearly defined and adoptable kind of interface
     
  87. actuator
    actuator
     
     
    German: Stellantrieb
  88. Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) (SCADA)
    Modern standard widely employed to control industrial machines electronically
     
     
    German: Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA)
  89. Supply-Chain-Management (Supply-Chain-Management)
    Supply-Chain-Management
     
     
    German: Supply-Chain-Management (SCM)
  90. system
    A term for IT components which are providing some kind of service
     
  91. System Engineering (SE)
    System Engineering
     
  92. transparency
    Full overview of the IT landscape an all its ongoing services and data
     
     
    German: Transparenz
  93. umapi (umapi)
    Adaption of OPC UA standard as a brand of the mechanical engineering associations VDMA and VDW
     
     
    German: universal machine technology interface (umapi)