The Rise of Industry Specific Data Definitions in MQTT

Ian Skerrett
2 min readFeb 5, 2020

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MQTT has become an unqualified success as an IoT messaging protocol. However, MQTT’s publish/subscribe protocol only defines how to transport the data from the client to a central broker. MQTT does not define how the data is structured or the meaning of the data. Each IoT application is expected to define a consistent data representation for all the MQTT clients to understand.

For IoT applications that want to include IoT devices from a variety of suppliers that lack of a data standard can become an issue. For example a SCADA system that wants to connect with factory equipment from multiple vendors will need all the vendors to instrument their equipment to send data in a consistent format. There are two general ways to accomplish this: 1) the SCADA vendor publishes a proprietary message and data format and encourages the equipment manufacturer to conform to the proprietary standard, and 2) an industry association works to create a standard for message and data format. OPC-UA is an example of this in the manufacturing industry.

A trend I have noticed lately is the rise of industry specific data definitions that use MQTT as the transport protocol. Each of these industry efforts is attempting to standardize the MQTT topic namespace and the payload format of the data. The intention is to create a standard that will promote interoperability between various IoT devices and various IoT cloud applications.

Two recent examples of industry initiatives using MQTT:

  1. The Eclipse Foundation has just launched the Sparkplug Working Group to develop the definition of technical specifications and associated implementations that rationalize access to industrial data, improve interoperability and scalability of IIoT solutions, and provide an overall framework for supporting Industry 4.0 for oil and gas, energy, manufacturing, smart cities and other related industries. The Sparkplug specification will define a MQTT topic namespace, payload, and session state management that can be applied generically. Companies such as Chevron, Canary Labs, Cirrus Link Solutions, HiveMQ, and Inductive Automation are leading this initiative.
  2. VDA is a German automotive manufacturing association that has published a standard, called VDA5050, to specify the AGV (autonomous factory robots) and the control system. The standard uses MQTT as the message transport. [link to standard in German]

One distinct advantage of using MQTT is that is appears to be more efficient than other approaches. For instance in this presentation, it compares MQTT, OPC-UA and Modbus in the oil and gas industry. It clearly shows MQTT as being more efficient for network bandwidth.

I predict we will see more and more industry initiatives that focus on defining the MQTT data format for specific industry use cases. It seems to be the next logical step in the MQTT standards community.

Disclosure: HiveMQ is a client

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Ian Skerrett

I advise companies about open source communities, marketing strategies, developer marketing, IoT, and more. Former VP of Marketing@HiveMQ and VP Mktg@Eclipse