[basyx-dev] Operations & ControlComponent integrations

[Nicolas DUMINY <nicolas.duminy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear BaSyx development team,

I have been trying to deploy operations on administration shells submodels with no success.
(1) It appears that if the submodel (with operations) is deployed after the servlet was created, the attempts to invoke an operation always return null.
(2) Whereas, it works perfectly if the submodel is deployed at the same time that the servlet is created.
Below the differences in the test implementations for both cases:

(1) BaSyxContext context = new BaSyxContext("/basys.examples", "").
				// Deploy example specific servlets to Tomcat server in this context
				addServletMapping("/Testsuite/components/BaSys/1.0/SampleModel/*",  new SubmodelServlet(new SampleSubModel()));

(2) BaSyxContext context = new BaSyxContext("/basys.examples", "").
				// Deploy example specific servlets to Tomcat server in this context
				addServletMapping("/Testsuite/components/BaSys/1.0/SampleModel/*",  new SubmodelServlet());
    VABConnectionManager vabm = new VABConnectionManager(new AASRegistryProxy("http://localhost:8080/basys.ddpaas/Components/Directory/SQL";), new HTTPConnectorProvider());  // Registry not used
    VABElementProxy vabProxy = vabm.connectToVABElementByPath("http://localhost:8080/basys.examples/Testsuite/components/BaSys/1.0/SampleModel/";); // Endpoint corresponds to submodel servlet (checked already)
    vabProxy.createValue("", new SampleSubModel());

The SampleSubModel is the same as the one used in this snippet: org.eclipse.basyx.examples.snippets.aas.submodels.InvokeSubModelOperationSDK.
The tests performed are also the same than in org.eclipse.basyx.examples.snippets.aas.submodels.InvokeSubModelOperationSDK.

I also tried to invoke operations using the VAB crude calls but I encounter the same problem, the operations return null everytime if the submodel was deployed after the servlet's creation.

Is it a known bug? How could I make the operations work?


Another question: how best to integrate control components into an Administrative Shell?
In org.eclipse.basyx.examples.scenarios.device.controllable.RunExampleSimpleControllableTCPDevice example, the control component only puts the address of its TCP server as the endpoint of an empty submodel "ControlComponent".
I am speculating as the example don't access at all the control component via its AAS, but regarding controlling the device, is this AAS only here to host the address of the TCP server? So the AAS is only used to store the status information of the device and is to be bypassed when controlling the device?

If I wanted to control the device via its AAS (encapsulating the control component as a submodel for instance), how should I do?
Is it a normal use of BaSyx or am I missing something?


Best regards,


Nicolas Duminy