REST and DreamFactory in the Internet of Things: A winning combination.

by Terence Bennett • June 10, 2015

IoT_image

There is no shortage of talk about the Internet of Things (IoT). Regardless of how you feel about all the buzz surrounding the IoT, there’s no doubt an enormous and growing number of devices are getting connected to the Internet to enable or deliver new functionality and services.



Another certainty about the Internet of Things is, well, the Internet. And the near universal way applications and devices communicate over the Internet is via RESTful services. REST APIs provide the simplest way for connected applications and “Things” to interact in a standard, well-understood way. Plus, the data from all these connected things needs to be ingested, stored, and processed in a variety of database types, and consistent REST APIs is the most efficient way to do it. Finally, there’s need to build applications (web, mobile and other) to help other systems and people do something with all this IoT data.

Related reading: API Design Trends

So no matter where you go in the IoT, you’re bound to need RESTful services.

As an open source RESTful backend integration platform, DreamFactory is poised to play a significant role in the IoT. It not only provides secure REST APIs for any data source, it keeps true to the open source nature of many key foundational technologies on which the Internet is built.

Today, DreamFactory is already playing a growing role in the IoT:

  • DreamFactory is being used in production IoT applications today.

  • Intel has a great tutorial for connecting DreamFactory to the Intel Galileo IoT Gateway.

  • We had an amazingly strong turnout for our presentation and at our booth at last month’s IoT DevCon in Santa Clara

  • Former GigaOm analyst and IoT expert, Janakiram MSV, is traveling the world with a complete IoT demo system using DreamFactory on the Raspberry Pi 2 configured as an IoT gateway. In fact, he gave the keynote and led the IoT Bootcamp this week at the IoT Expo in New York.

If you want to learn more about REST and DreamFactory in the IoT, Janakiram will be hosting a webinar on June 18th entitled, “Storing and Accessing IoT Data with an Open Source RESTful Backend.” I encourage you to register. He covers many aspects of data management in the IoT and his Raspberry Pi-based demo is very cool.