Properties
Properties are the individual pieces of information about an asset.
An asset can have any number of properties.
Property Types
There are several different types of property.
Analogue properties contain continuous numbers – they are normally used for measurements or numeric figures.
Status properties only ever have a value of 1 or 0. Often used for on/off or open/closed indication.
Enumeration properties are discrete values (they never have fractions), and they usually represent the status of an asset. They often have more options than simply yes or no (such as Open, Closed or Ajar).
Text properties contain character values instead of numbers. There are also several specific formats of text property, such as IP Address, URL and Phone Number.
There are also a variety of other property types such as symbols and models, that can usually be ignored when performing analytics.
External Data
Any property can be bound to external data. This means that it rather than being a fixed value, the value of the property will change over time and can be either subscribed to or queried.
A single asset may have many properties which can be bound to different sources. This means that requesting data for a single asset might include information from several different external sources.