IoT Tips

Here is a demo that uses repeater widget and smart grid widget to display a nested table. Note: This demo is for testing use. Create a datashape for  the nested datatable named DataTableStructure Create DataShape named InfoStructure for Obj Create the nested datatable named DataTableTest as below Create a service named AddObjInput as below in this datatable Crate a Mashup named RepeaterMsh Add widgets like textbox, label, button and smart grid on the mashup There are some parameters we added before, please bind them to the widgets that we just added to the mashup Add DataTableTest service AddOrUpdateDataTableEntry to the mashup. Bind textbox and smart grid edited table to AddOrUpdateDataTableEntry parameter. Bind button click event to trigger the service AddOrUpdateDataTableEntry The smart grid widget need a special attribute named TableDefinition This demo sample is{"columns":[{"name":"PrimarySchool","type":"text","display":"PrimarySchool"},{"name":"SecondarySchool","type":"text","display":"SecondarySchool"},{"name":"HighSchool","type":"text","display":"HighSchool"}]} Create mashup which has repeater widgets The mashup over view is like below The first part is aimed to add a new record, the second part (repeater widget)is aimed to display table data, and also update data. In the first part, there are textboxs, labels, smart grid and button widget. They are banded to the service named AddDataTableEntry, aimed to add a new record in the table. (Smart grid is used to add the nested table data) There is a button named AddRecords, bind it’s clicked event to AddDataTableEntry service. And bind the AddDataTableEntry service’s event ServiceInvokeCompleteted to GetDataTableEntries The smart grid widget in here is an empty grid, but it should have a structure at beginning. That’s why to create a service named AddObjInput in step2. It returns an empty table but with the datashape. The second part is a repeater widget. Repeater widget has an attribute named Mashup, bind the mashup Repeatermsh. Bind GetDataTableEntries all data to the repeater widget. There should be some parameters that need to bind like gender, InfoTable, Sname… Testing the demo Note: Smart Grid widget is not a ThingWorx OOTB functionality The smart grid widget can be edited flexible. Please download with is Link https://marketplace.thingworx.com/Items/Smart%20Grid%20Widget There is a thread teach how to use smart grid: https://community.thingworx.com/message/53379#53379

This script is provided as is and is not officially supported by PTC. Users are welcome to edit or change this script as desired. This script automates the installation steps outlined in the ThingWorx Installation Guide. If you are not familiar with these processes or are installing ThingWorx for the first time, it is recommended to refer to the guide for additional information. Requirements:   64-bit Linux: Ubuntu (all flavors) 14/15/16, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6/7, or CentOS 6/7   Root privileges   Internet connection   A ThingWorx platform installation file for either H2 or PostgreSQL (available in the PTC downloads center https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/software_update/swupdate.jsp )   *NOTE: This script does not require a GUI and can be run in headless mode Minimal download option: The script will look in the working directory for pre-downloaded Java, Tomcat, and (for RHEL and CentOS) PostgreSQL installation files. If the installer detects one of the supported files, the user will be given the option to install with that file and skip the automated download. This feature is limited to specific versions and requires one (or more) of the following files:     jdk-8u92-linux-x64.tar.gz     apache-tomcat-8.0.33.tar.gz     pgdg-redhat94-9.4-3.noarch.rpm     NOTE: This reduces the amount of data downloaded by the script, but does not eliminate it entirely. An active internet connection is still required. Support for existing SSL certificates: If an existing SSL certificate exists and the user wishes to use it instead of automatically generating one with the script, the user can copy the '.keystore' file to the working directory before running the script. During the installation process the user will be prompted with the option to use this keystore file, and will need to provide the keystore password created with the certificate.     NOTE: this script does not support keystore passwords containing the following characters: '!/@\"#$%^&*()_+]    *Note for Red Hat Enterprise Linux users*     This script was designed to work on servers with an active Red Hat subscription. It has been tested and appears to work on unsubscribed servers if the following applications are installed: gcc make epel repository (see This Red Hat Announcement for more information) Download the file attached to this document Steps to use this script: 1. Create a new folder on your Linux server. (This will be referred to as the 'working folder') 2. Download the ThingWorx platform installer file from the PTC Software downloads page. (For example, MED-61111-CD-072_SP2_ThingWorx-Platform-Postgres-7-2-2.zip) 3. Copy the installer file to the working folder. Do not unzip. 4. Copy the installer.sh file to your working folder. 5. In the command prompt, cd to your working directory. 6. Make the installer.sh file excutable:   > chmod +x installer.sh 7. Run the installer.sh file either using sudo or logging in as root   > sudo bash installer.sh   OR   > su   > bash installer.sh   *NOTE: The 'bash' command is mandatory, running the installer with the 'sh' command will not work

Sampling Strategy​ This Blog Post will cover the 4 sampling Strategies that are available in ThingWorx Analytics.  It will tell you how the sampling strategy runs behind the scenes, when you may want to use that strategy, and will give you the pros and cons of each strategy. SAMPLE_WITH_REPLACEMENT This strategy is not often used by professionals but still may be useful in certain circumstances.  When you sample with replacement, the value that you randomly selected is then returned to the sample pool.  So there is a chance that you can have the same record multiple times in your sample. Example Let’s say you have a hat that contain 3 cards with different people’s names on them. John Sarah Tom Let’s say you make 2 random selections. The first selection you pull out the name Tom. When you sample with replacement, you would put the name Tom back into the hat and then randomly select a card again.  For your second selection, it is possible to get another name like Sarah, or the same one you selected, Tom. Pros May find improved models in smaller datasets with low row counts Cons The Accuracy of the model may be artificially inflated due to duplicates in the sample SAMPLE_WITHOUT_REPLACEMENT This is the default setting in ThingWorx Analytics and the most commonly used sampling strategy by professionals.  The way this strategy works is after the value is randomly selected from the sample pool, it is not returned.  This ensures that all the values that are selected for the sample, are unique. Example Let’s say you have a hat that contain 3 cards with different people’s names on them. John Sarah Tom Let’s say you make 2 random selections. The first selection you pull out the name Tom. When you sample without replacement, you would randomly select a card from the hat again without adding the card Tom.  For your second selection, you could only get the Sarah or John card. Pros This is the sampling strategy that is most commonly used It will deliver the best results in most cases Cons May not be the best choice if the desired goal is underrepresented in the dataset UPSAMPLE_AND_SAMPLE_WITHOUT_REPLACEMENT This is useful when the desired goal is underrepresented in the dataset.  The features that represent the desired outcome of the goal are copied multiple times so they represent a larger share of the total dataset. Example Let’s say you are trying to discover if a patient is at risk for developing a rare condition, like chronic kidney failure, that affects around .5% of the US population.  In this case, the most accurate model that would be generated would say that no one will get this condition, and according to the numbers, it would be right 99.5% of the time.  But in reality, this is not helpful at all to the use case since you want to know if the patient is at risk of developing the condition. To avoid this from happening, copies are made of the records where the patient did develop the condition so it represents a larger share of the dataset.  Doing this will give ThingWorx Analytics more examples to help it generate a more accurate model. Pros Patterns from the original dataset remain intact Cons Longer training time DOWNSAMPLE_AND_SAMPLE_WITHOUT_REPLACEMENT This is also useful when the desired goal is underrepresented in the dataset. In downsample and sample without replacement, some features that do not represent the desired goal outcome are removed. This is done to increase the desired features percentage of the dataset. Example Let’s continue using the medical example from above.  Instead of creating copies of the desired records, undesired record are removed from the dataset.  This causes the records where patients did develop the condition to occupy a larger percentage of the dataset. Pros Shorter training time Cons Patterns from the original dataset may be lost

One of topics that are usually of interest when entering the ThingWorx world is integration with third-party systems. Disclaimer: the following guide is intended to be rather comprehensive and guide you in achieving the best integration with your desired system ( !=quick and dirty ). For example, from my experience, customers many times ask: -how can I connect to my hardware device -how can I connect to this device cloud so I can get data from it? -how can I connect to my ERP? With some luck, I hope that at the end of this article I will provide a generic workflow that will help you on achieving the best integration solution for your use-case. We need to write down some requirements (they are not in order; depending on the usecase might not be worth to be answered): 0. What is the usecase (detailed description) ?.      This is by far one of the most important aspects of any software development project.      Please document your usecase with all possible future uses.      For example:           - I want to send information from sensors to the ThingWorx Server, and I want to do TCP Tunnelling to the device and/or Remote Desktop. Or maybe only sending information from sensors and nothing else. Do I need in the future Software Updates or not?           - I want to read the Customer information from my CRM AND also update that information (read/write). 1. Write down system specification for the hardware or software system.           -Available RAM for user apps           -Available Disk Space for User Apps           -Does it have a TCP IP Stack?           -Operating System           -Installed runtimes (Java/.NET - which versions?) 2. Can I access the system or device directly from the ThingWorx Server?      This means answering the question: is my system directly accessible from my server? Or is there a firewall which stops incoming connections?      Another question to answer, is: can I modify my firewall to allow incoming connections? 3. What protocol is my device or system capable of supporting for data transfer?      Example: I have a device which is capable of outputting information through TCP only.                     I have a device who can only do HTTP callbacks to a HTTP server.                     I have Microsoft SQL, to which I can connect through ADO.NET or JDBC.                     I have a third party service billing provider who supports interfacing via HTTP Webservices (SOAP or REST).                     I have a device supporting CoAP.      Typically all third party software systems support communication via Webservices. 4. Can I configure and/or deploy new software to my device or system?      We need to have this question answered, because on some cases it might make more sense to write some logic on the system or device.      For example if I want to access data from an SQL server and my usecase might require some processing for which that SQL server is better suited to do, it might be much more efficient to have that logic stored as a Stored Procedure there and I just call it from ThingWorx.       Or in the case of Windchill, it might make more sense to write an InfoEngine task to do my functionality than writing that on the ThingWorx side.      Possible example answers:                     -My device is already deployed in the field and I can not modify the configuration at all.                     -My device is a new product, so I can put whatever software I want on it.                     -I only have read access to my software system, so I must do all processing externally. If you wrote down all of those it is time to determine what are the integration options for us. The typical workflow that I follow is the next one: I look for any Out-Of-The-Box supported protocol (determined at step 3) and then implement the needed functionality in the language that is best suited for my usecase (Javascript usually). The list of protocols that the platform supports is listed in different places: -PTC Help Center Link -ThingWorx Marketplace - https://marketplace.thingworx.com/items The key point is that the list is alive and updated by both our partners and us. Usually the preferred way to write logic is by using the Javascript services. It makes it incredibly fast to write down your business logic without having the need to recompile. The elements from the ThingWorx ecosystems that we can use are the following: -the ThingWorx server itself (it has built in support for calling external Webservices) -ThingWorx Extensions. They are Java written pieces of code that can help you achieve your usecase. To be used whenever your ThingWorx server OOTB functionality (or Marketplace Extensions) does not allow you to develop your usecase. There is no actual need to write an Extension if somebody else already developed that for you and published in the ThingWorx Marketplace https://marketplace.thingworx.com/items      A link for understanding Extension is the following: How to rapidly develop ThingWorx IIoT Extensions -ThingWorx Integration Connectors -ThingWorx Edge Micro Server: https://developer.thingworx.com/ems -ThingWorx Edge SDKs: https://developer.thingworx.com/sdks Examples: -I have an third party Server which allows me to send SMS and Voice messages through it via its Rest API.      Answer: best here is to use the OOTB Webservices support from ThingWorx, which exposes the HTTP verbs, like GET, POST, PUT, via the ContentLoaderFunctions -I have a device which has a TCP stack that is capable only to do HTTP calls.      Answer: I can point that device to do calls against the REST API of ThingWorx, in order to update data directly there. -I have a fleet of 300.000 devices which are sending their data to an MQTT server.      Answer: In this case I can use the MQTT Extension that is offered by ThingWorx -I have an external SQL server that does not accept inbound connections (behind a firewall) but I must get data from it. Network will however allow outbound connections      Answer: use the ADO.NET Edge Client that must be installed in a location accessible to that server. The ADO.NET Edge Client will connect to the Server and then to the ThingWorx platform allowing use of SQL statements directly from within the platform. -I have a device who only accepts TCP connections and I want to read data from it. It sends data only after receiving a command through TCP.      Answer: Use the TCP Extension available in the ThingWorx Marketplace. It is built specifically for this usecase -I have a device which has lots of RAM and Disk Space and I must send data from it, while allowing software updates in the future.      Answer: depending on your preferred coding language you can use either the ThingWorx Edge Microserver (for which you must write code in LUA) or write an implementation in one of the ThingWorx Edge SDKs. A key point here is to understand that the coding effort is identical in theory, and is only limited by the experience you have and the functionality that may be available easier in Java, vs LUA, vs C, vs. Net. I appreciate feedback to this article in the hope of being able to continuously improve it.

This post will cover the challenges I've had while going through the setup of .NET SDK based ADO Service for SQL Server DB Connection. I'll be starting from the scratch on setting up the service for this to present full picture on the setup. Pre-requisite 1. Download and install Microsoft SQL Server Express or Enterprise edition, for testing I worked with Express edition : https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-editions-express 2. Once installed, it's imperative that the TCP/IP Protocol is enabled in the SQL Server Configuration Manager for the SQL Server 3. Download ThingWorx Edge ADO Service from PTC Software download page What is ThingWorx ADO Service? An ActiveX Data Object service allowing connection to a Microsoft database source e.g. MS SQL Server, MS Excel or MS .NET application to the ThingWorx platform. It is based on the ThingWorx .NET SDK. Installing ADO Service Let me begin by saying this is just a summary, in a crude way of course, of ThingWorx Edge ADO Service Configuration Guide. So when in doubt it's strongly recommended to go through the guide,also provided together with the downloaded package. I'll be using the ThingWorx ADO Service v5.6.1, most recent release, for the purpose of this blog. Depending if you are on x86 or x64 Windows navigate to the C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET for accessing the InstallUtil.exe You'll find the above specified file under following two locations, use the one that applies to your use case. i) For x64 : C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319 ii) For x86 : C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319 1. Copy over the desired InstallUtil.exe to the location where you have unzipped the ADO Service package, the one downloaded above. e.g. I've put mine at C:\Software\ThingWorxSoftware\ADOService\ 2. Start a command prompt (Windows Start Menu > Command Prompt) and execute the InstallUtil.exe ThingWorxADOService.exe 3. This should create a service and some additional info in the \\ADOService folder in the form of InstallUtil.InstallLog 4. Check the log for confirmation, you should see something similar Running a transacted installation. ...     .... The Commit phase completed successfully. The transacted install has completed. ​​5. In Windows Explorer navigate to the folder containing all the unzipped files, and edit the AdoThing.config 6. For this blog I've security disabled, though obviously in production you'd definitely want to enable it 7. Configure the ConnectionSettings as per your requirement (refer to the guide for more detail on settings), below I'm noting the settings that will require configuration in its most minimum form (I've also attached my complete AdoThing.config file for reference) "rows": [       {         "Address": "localhost",         "Port": 8080,         "Resource": "/Thingworx/WS",         "IsSecure": false,         "ThingName": "AdoThing",         "AppKey": "f7e230ac-3ce9-4d91-8560-ad035b09fc70",         "AllowSelfSignedCertificates": false,         "DisableCertValidation": true,           "DisableEncryption": true       }     ] 8. Configure the connection string for the SQL Server in following section, in the same file opened above     "rows": [       {         "ConnectionType": "OleDb",         "ConnectionString": "Provider=SQLNCLI11;Server=localhosts\\SQLEXPRESS;Database=TWXDB;Uid=sa;Pwd=login123;",         "AlwaysConnected": true,         "QueryEnabled": true,         "CommandEnabled": true,         "CommandTimeout": 60       }     ] 9. Just to highlight what's what in ConnectionString above: "ConnectionString": "Provider=SQLNCLI11;Server=<Machine/ClientName>\\SQLServerInstanceName;Database=<databaseName>;Uid=<userName>;Pwd=<password>;" 10. To get correct connection string syntax for different source refer to the ConnectionStrings.com 11. Save the file 12. Navigate to the windows services by opening Windows Start > Run > services.msc 13. Check for the service ThingWorx .NET ADO Client as you'll have to start it if it's set to Manual, like so in my case Following message will be logged on successful connection  in the DotNETSDK -X-X-X.log : [Critical] twWs_Connect: Websocket connected! At the end of the blog I'll share some of the errors that I came across while working on this and how to go about addressing them. Creating and connecting to Remote Database Thing Now, let's navigate to the ThingWorx Composer and create a Thing with RemoteDatabase Template to consume the resource created above in the form of ADO Service. I've named my thing as AdoThing while creating it in ThingWorx Composer, which matches with the ThingName used in the AdoThing.json file. If everything went through as needed you should see the isConnected = true in the AdoThing's Properties section. Since, this is a Database thing I can now go about creating all the required services concerning the Create, Update, Delete (CRUD) operations, just like for any database for created using the RDBMS Connector. Handling errors while setting up the ADO Service Here are some of the errors that I encountered while setting up the ADO service for this blog: Error 1: com.thingworx.ado.AdoThing Cannot connect to database. : System.Data.OleDb.OleDbException: Login timeout expired Note: Logged in DotNetSDK-X-X-X.log Cause & Resolution: - Service is not able to successfully reach or authenticate against the SQL Server Express DB instance - Ensure that the TCP/IP is enabled for the Protocols for the SQL Express, as I have shared in the screenshot above - Make sure that the username / password used for authenticating with the database is correctly provided while configuring the settings for the OLEDB section in    AdoThing.config Error 2: com.thingworx.ado.AdoThing GetTables OleDbException error : System.Data.OleDb.OleDbException Note: Logged in Application.log from ThingWorx platform Cause & Resolution - This exception is thrown when user attempts to check for the available tables, while creating the service in the ThingWorx Composer - Resolution to this is similar to that mentioned above for Error 1 Error 3: [U: SYSTEM] [O: com.thingworx.ado.AdoThing] OleDbException [code = -2147217865, message = Invalid object name 'TWXDB.DemoTable'.] executing SQL query Note: Logged in Application.log from ThingWorx platform while testing/executing the SQL service created in the ThingWorx Composer Cause & Resolution - The error is due to the usage of DB name in front of the table name, it's not required since the DB name is already selected in the connection String Error 4: [O: com.thingworx.Configuration] Could not read configuration file. : Newtonsoft.Json.JsonReaderException: Bad JSON escape sequence: \S. Path 'Settings.rows[0].ConnectionString', line 656, position 71. Note: Logged in DotNetSDK-X-X-X.log Cause & Resolution - This is caused due to the "ConnectionString": "Provider=SQLNCLI11;Server=<machineNameOrIP>\SQLEXPRESS;Database=TWXDB;Uid=sa;Pwd=login123;", - Json requires this to be escaped thus switching to "ConnectionString": "Provider=SQLNCLI11;Server=<machineNameOrIP>\\SQLEXPRESS;Database=TWXDB;Uid=sa;Pwd=login123;", resolved the issue - Among many other, https://jsonformatter.curiousconcept.com/​ is quite helpful in weeding out the issues from the JSON syntax Error 4: [O: com.thingworx.ado.AdoClient] Error while initializing new AdoThing, or opening connection to Platform. : System.AccessViolationException: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.     at com.thingworx.communications.client.TwApiWrapper.twApi_Connect(UInt32 timeout, Int32 retries)     at com.thingworx.communications.client.TwApiWrapper.Connect(UInt32 timeout, Int16 retries)     at com.thingworx.communications.client.BaseClient.start()     at com.thingworx.ado.AdoClient.run() Note: Logged in DotNetSDK-X-X-X.log Cause & Resolution - This error is observed when using FIPS version of the  ADO Service, esp. when downloaded from the ThingWorx Marketplace - Make sure to recheck the SSL configuration - When not using SSL check that the x64 and x86 directories only contain twApi.dll as by default FIPS version contain two additional dlls i.e. libeay32.dll & ssleay32.dll in both x64 & x86 directories

This video will walk you through the first steps of how to set-up Analytics Manager for Real-Time Scoring. More specifically this video demonstrate how to share your predictive model from Analytics Builder into Analytics Manger -and test the shared model.   Updated Link for access to this video::  ThingWorx Analytics Manager: Publish & Test a Predictive Model

How to input Database User Credentials at RunTime. This Blog considers that you have already imported the Database Extension and Configured the Thing Template. If you have not done this already please see Steps to connecting to your Relational Database first. Steps: Create a Database Thing template with correct configuration. Example configuration for MySql Database: jDBCDriverClass: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver jDBCConnectionURL: jdbc:mysql://127.0.0.1:3306/<DatabaseNameHere>?allowMultiQueries=true connectionValidationString: SELECT NOW() maxConnections: 100 userName: <DataBaseUserNameHere> password: <DataBasePasswordHere> Create any Generic Thing and add a service to create thing based on the Thing template created in Step 1. Example: // NewDataBaseThingName is the String input for name the database thing to be created. // MySqlServerUpdatedConfiguration is the Thing template with correct configuration var params = {      name: NewDataBaseThingName /* STRING */,      description: NewDataBaseThingName /* STRING */,     thingTemplateName: "MySqlServerUpdatedConfiguration" /* THINGTEMPLATENAME */,     tags: undefined /* TAGS */ }; // no return Resources["EntityServices"].CreateThing(params); Add code to enable and then restart the above thing using EnableThing() and RestartThing() service. Example Things[NewDataBaseThingName].EnableThing(); Things[NewDataBaseThingName].RestartThing(); Test and confirm that the Database Thing services runs as expected. Now Create a DataShape with following Fields: jDBCDriverClass: STRING jDBCConnectionURL: STRING connectionValidationString: STRING maxConnections: NUMBER userName: STRING password: PASSWORD Now in the Generic Thing created in Step 1 add code to update the configuration settings of DataBase Thing. Make sure JDBC Driver Class Name should never be changed. If different database connection is required use different Thing Template. Also, add code to restart the DataBase Thing using RestartThing() service. Example: var datashapeParams = {     infoTableName : "InfoTable",     dataShapeName : "DatabaseConfigurationDS" }; // CreateInfoTableFromDataShape(infoTableName:STRING("InfoTable"), dataShapeName:STRING):INFOTABLE(DatabaseConfigurationDS) var config = Resources["InfoTableFunctions"].CreateInfoTableFromDataShape(datashapeParams); var passwordParams = {         data: "DataBasePasswordHere" /* STRING */ }; // DatabaseConfigurationDS entry object var newEntry = new Object(); newEntry.jDBCDriverClass= "com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"; // STRING newEntry.jDBCConnectionURL = "jdbc:mysql://127.0.0.1:3306/<DatabaseNameHere>?allowMultiQueries=true"; // STRING newEntry.connectionValidationString = "SELECT NOW()"; // STRING newEntry.maxConnections = 100; // NUMBER newEntry.userName = "DataBaseUserNameHere"; // STRING newEntry.password = Resources["EncryptionServices"].EncryptPropertyValue(passwordParams); // PASSWORD config.AddRow(newEntry); var configurationTableParams = { configurationTable: config /* INFOTABLE */, persistent: true /* BOOLEAN */, tableName: "ConnectionInfo" /* STRING */ }; // ThingNameForConfigurationUpdate is the input string for Thing Name whose configuration needs to be updated. // no return Things[ThingNameForConfigurationUpdate].SetConfigurationTable(configurationTableParams); Things[ThingNameForConfigurationUpdate].RestartThing(); Test and confirm that the Database Thing services runs as expected.

1. Use Postman or any other software for Rest Api call to the ThingWorx. 2. Create a query in Postman with following parameters: Type: POST URL: https://<IP>:<PORT>/Thingworx/Users/<UserName>/Services/AssignNewPassword <IP>: IP of the server where ThingWorx is installed. <PORT>: Port on which ThingWorx is running (if required). <UserName>: User Name of the user whom Password is to be reset. Headers: appkey : Your Administrator App key or App key of user having Permission for AssignNewPassword Service for the user. Content-Type: application/json Body: {     "newPassword":"NewPasswordHere",     "newPasswordConfirm":"NewPasswordHere" } 3. Send the Query. 4. Login using new Password.

In this particular scenario, the server is experiencing a severe performance drop.The first step to check first is the overall state of the server -- CPU consumption, memory, disk I/O. Not seeing anything unusual there, the second step is to check the Thingworx condition through the status tool available with the Tomcat manager. Per the observation: Despite 12 GB of memory being allocated, only 1 GB is in use. Large number of threads currently running on the server is experiencing long run times (up to 35 minutes) Checking Tomcat configuration didn't show any errors or potential causes of the problem, thus moving onto the second bullet, the threads need to be analyzed. That thread has been running 200,936 milliseconds -- more than 3 minutes for an operation that should take less than a second. Also, it's noted that there were 93 busy threads running concurrently. Causes: Concurrency on writing session variable values to the server. The threads are kept alive and blocking the system. Tracing the issue back to the piece of code in the service recently included in the application, the problem has been solved by adding an IF condition in order to perform Session variable values update only when needed. In result, the update only happens once a shift. Conclusion: Using Tomcat to view mashup generated threads helped identify the service involved in the root cause. Modification required to resolve was a small code change to reduce the frequency of the session variable update.

In this Blog, we will share some light about Gradient boost, which is a default algorithm in our Analytics platform. We will touch on: 1) The main purpose of Gradient boost and how the technique works. 2) We will look at advantages and constraint. 3) Last some “nice to know” tips when working with Gradient. Gradient boost is a machine learning technique which main purpose is to help weak prediction models become stronger. Gradient boost works by building one tree at a time, and correct errors made by previously tree. The theory support reweights of edges which allows badly weight edges to get reweighted. For example the misclassified gain weight and those weights which are classified correctly, lose weight. It is kind of the same strategy when dealing with stocks; you balance the investment between bonds and share. An analog could also be done to illnesses; If a doctor informs that you have a rare disease, you want to make sure to get a few more opinions from other doctors, You will evaluate all the information to make a more correct decision about how to cure yourself. Why use gradient boost: - Gradient boost provides the user with a powerful tool to boost/improve weak prediction models. - Gradient boost works well with regression and classification problems, therefore Decision tree can benefit from applying gradient boost. - Gradient bo​ost is known in the industry, to be one of the best techniques to use when dealing with model improvement. - Gradient boost uses stagewise fashion, in this way each time it adjust a tree, it does not go back and readjust when dealing with the next tree. As with all machine learning algorithms gradient boost also have some constraint: - There is a change of overfitting. “Nice to know” tips: - A natural way to reduce this risk of overfitting would be to monitor and adjust the iterations. - The depth of the tree might have an influence on the prediction error, observe what happens if the depth is a stump/1 level deep.

The term ‘Extension’ or ‘Plugin’ often has many different meanings. For example, from the point of view of a Product Manager it often means an ‘easy’ way to add additional functionality to an existing piece of software. In contrast, from the point of view of a Software Developer it often means new syntax to memorize, extensive amounts of API documentation to read and very often weeks or even months of trial and error to make this ‘easy’ addition of functionality.  We at ThingWorx recognized that in order to be a true Platform we need to take action to make the creation of Extensions easier at all phases of the process. Our development team took on the challenge of understanding what it is that normally makes this such a difficult process, and try and find solutions. We took to the open source community looking for a Platform that could offer our Extension developers a wide array of functionality that was easily accessible and familiar. This is where the Eclipse IDE comes in. We were able to create a Plugin of our own for the Eclipse IDE that makes it easy for an Extension Developer to create an Extension Project, generate ThingWorx specific code, manage all the project configuration and build files and also package the Extension. We can do all of this without having a developer read any API documentation or manually write any code, leaving the Extension Developer to focus on what they are best at, which is adding that additional functionality we mentioned earlier. Extensibility and the true nature of a Platform Extensibility is a core aspect of any true Platform as it allows users to add functionality at any time to meet new and changing requirements. The capabilities of extensions are almost endless but here are a few examples: Adding new UI Widgets to be used to visualize data Adding any custom third party Libraries to be used seamlessly in ThingWorx Easily accessing REST APIs outside of ThingWorx Creating helper Resources to be used across the entire platform Add custom Entities easily to multiple ThingWorx instances Provide custom Authenticators and Directory Services As you can see, it is possible to do practically anything that you or our community might find useful for the Internet of Things. This is the nature of a true ‘Platform’. How do I get started developing an extension? There are three steps that will help you dive into Extension Development quickly. First, an instance of ThingWorx Foundation and the ability to navigate the UI, called Composer. Second, a basic understanding of the ThingWorx Model, or “Thing Model”, is necessary. Finally, you will need an installation of the Eclipse IDE with the ThingWorx Eclipse Plugin installed to get started developing your extension. 1)  Getting familiar with ThingWorx Foundation The easiest way to get started playing with the ThingWorx platform is to head over to the Developer Portal and spin up a hosted ThingWorx Foundation server. This is as easy as clicking the ‘Create Foundation Server’ button and a 30-day hosted instance will be created for you to start using as your own personal development playground. If you prefer to set up and work in your own environment, you can also download a Developer Trial Edition to host on your own machine. In order to get familiar with ThingWorx Foundation, I recommend going through our ThingWorx Foundation Quickstart Guide that introduces you to the core building blocks of the platform as well as guide you through a typical scenario of creating a simple IoT application. 2)  Understanding the Thing Model Basics If you are already familiar with the Thing Model and know the basics of using the ThingWorx Platform, then you can probably skip over this section. If you aren’t, or just want a refresher, I’ll go over the basics here. The Thing Model is a collection of Entities that define your solution or business model in ThingWorx. You need a Thing Model for a few reasons.  For those in software development, the Thing Model and its benefits are very similar to those of the Object Oriented programming model.  A good model allows you to maximize reusability, maintainability, and encapsulation.  Having a sound Thing Model means that the future of your IIoT solution will be minimally affected by things like migration, iterative changes, permission changes and security vulnerabilities. The three most commonly used and most important Entities within your model are Things, Thing Templates, and Thing Shapes. These entity types will be the main building blocks for your Thing Model. These are only a few of the Entity Types provided by ThingWorx. It is not necessary but definitely recommended, to have a more comprehensive understanding of the Thing Model, and to work with the entire collection of Entity Types within the ThingWorx Platform by going through the ThingWorx Foundation Quickstart Guide on the Developer Portal. 3)  Dive into the Eclipse Plugin and develop your own extension Lastly, if you don’t have Eclipse IDE installed, head over to the eclipse.org download page and get one installed on your machine. Once you have that, you can find the Eclipse Plugin on our Marketplace here. In a next step, you will want to create a new Extension Project. We added a ThingWorx Extension perspective that enables all of the custom functionality.   Once in the correct perspective, we tried to make our plugin as intuitive as possible. We did this by following as many of the Eclipse usability standards as we could, which means that if you are familiar with the Eclipse IDE you should be able to find most of the ThingWorx functionality on your own. For Example, a simple ‘File’ >> ‘New’ will show you all the options for creating a Project. Creating a new ThingWorx Extension project requires a Name and a ThingWorx Extension SDK (found on the ThingWorx Marketplace) of the version of ThingWorx that you are building your extension for.   By utilizing the capabilities of the Eclipse IDE, we were able to automate the creation of many of the artifacts that had slowed extension developers down. The wizard allows the plugin to handle creating and managing a build file and a metadata.xml as well as manage all of the project dependencies. Once you have an Extension Project, you can use the ThingWorx menus to create your Entities. These actions will create the necessary Java files and manage their applicable entry within the metadata.xml of your project.   After creating your Entity, you can right click the applicable java file which will show you the ‘ThingWorx Source’ menu. This houses the options to generate the code for additional characteristics (Services, Properties, etc.) making the need to learn all of the custom annotations and method signatures a much less daunting process.   Once you have generated some code with the Plugin, it is time to get started implementing your solution - This is the point where my expertise ends and yours begins! If you are interested in getting some more in-depth information on this topic, check out these additional resources: Tutorial: We have created a tutorial that guides you step-by-step through the entire process of developing a ThingWorx extension. Webcast: Watch this 60-minute, interactive deep-dive into IIoT development and learn how to use the Eclipse Plugin to rapidly create a custom ThingWorx extension. Head over to the Developer Portal and start bringing all of your great ideas to life!

One of the recurring patterns on the Axeda Platform is making requests from custom objects to other services, to be called either via Scripto, or through Expression Rules that help integrate Axeda data with your custom systems or third parties such as Salesforce.com.  Java developers would normally use a URLConnection to do this, but due to security requirements, access to the URLConnection API is sandboxed, and the HTTPBuilder API is provided instead. Below is a short example of GETting a payload from http://www.mocky.io/v2/57d02c05100000c201208cb5 to your custom object.  One of the requirements of many services is being able to pass in API keys as part of the header request.  While in this example the API key is embedded in the code, the recommended way of storing API keys on the Axeda Platform is to use the External Credential lockbox API.  This allows you to change the API keys securely without needing to change code. import groovyx.net.http.HTTPBuilder import static groovyx.net.http.ContentType.* import static groovyx.net.http.Method.* def http = new HTTPBuilder('https://www.mocky.io') http.request( GET, JSON ) {     uri.path = '/v2/57d02c05100000c201208cb5'     uri.headers.'appKey' = '7661392f-2372-4cba-a921-f1263c938090'     response.success = { resp ->         println "POST response status: ${resp.statusLine}"         logger.info "POST RESPONSE status: ${resp.statusLine}"         assert resp.statusLine.statusCode == 201     } } An example for Salesforce might look like so: import groovyx.net.http.HTTPBuilder import static groovyx.net.http.ContentType.* import static groovyx.net.http.Method.* def xml_body = """<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <env:Envelope xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"     xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"     xmlns:env="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">   <env:Body>     <n1:login xmlns:n1="urn:partner.soap.sforce.com">       <n1:username>johndoe@example.com</n1:username>       <n1:password>Password+SECRETKEY</n1:password>     </n1:login>   </env:Body> </env:Envelope> """ def http = new HTTPBuilder('https://login.salesforce.com/') http.request( POST ) {     uri.path = '/services/Soap/u/35.0 '     body = xml_body     response.success = { resp ->         println "POST response status: ${resp.statusLine         logger.info "POST RESPONSE status: ${resp.statusLine}"         assert resp.statusLine.statusCode == 201     } } This request will give you a security token you can use in future calls to Salesforce APIs; you would use Groovy's native XmlSlurper/XmlParser to parse the response and get the session id to use in future requests.  You would then use this session id like in the following example to get the available REST resources: import groovyx.net.http.HTTPBuilder import static groovyx.net.http.ContentType.* import static groovyx.net.http.Method.* def http = new HTTPBuilder('https://na1.salesforce.com/') http.request( POST ) {     uri.path = '/services/data/v29.0'     uri.headers.'Authorization' = 'Bearer SESSIONID'     response.success = { resp ->         println "POST response status: ${resp.statusLine}"         logger.info "POST RESPONSE status: ${resp.statusLine}"         assert resp.statusLine.statusCode == 201     } } Further reading: HttpBuilder Wiki - https://github.com/jgritman/httpbuilder/wiki Groovy Xml Processing - http://groovy-lang.org/processing-xml.html

When an Expression Rule of type Alarm, AlarmExtendedDataChange, AlarmSeverityChange or AlarmStateChange calls a Groovy script, the script is provided with the implicit object alarm.  This example shows how the alarm object can be used. This Expression Rule uses the CountAlarmsSinceHours Groovy script to check the number of alarms in the past number of hours, and escalate the alarm if more than three alarms have occurred: IF    ExecuteCustomObject("CountAlarmsSinceHours", 1) < 3 THEN SetAlarmState("ACKNOWLEDGED", "Less than three alarms in the past hour") ELSE  SetAlarmState("ESCALATED", "THREE OR MORE alarms in the past hour") Here is the definition of the CountAlarmsSinceHours Groovy script.  The script uses the parameter 'hours' passed from the expression rule and the implicit object 'alarm'.  It returns the number of times the current alarm has occurred within 'hours' hours. import com.axeda.drm.sdk.Context import com.axeda.drm.sdk.data.HistoricalAlarmFinder import java.util.Calendar import com.axeda.common.sdk.jdbc.DateQuery // get Date object for an hour ago Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance() cal.add(Calendar.HOUR, -parameters.hours.toInteger()) Date sinceTime = cal.getTime() HistoricalAlarmFinder findAlarms = new HistoricalAlarmFinder (Context.create()) findAlarms.device = alarm.device findAlarms.setAlarmName(alarm.name) findAlarms.date = DateQuery.after(sinceTime) List matchingAlarms = findAlarms.findAll()

Persistent vs. Logged Properties By Mike Jasperson, VP of IoT EDC   Executive Summary ThingWorx provides several different “aspects” (or storage options) for how property values are saved.  These options each have different implications for performance and scalability.  Understanding those implications is important for designing a scalable IOT solution.   Persistent Properties are best used for non-telemetry data which will change infrequently (for example only a few times in a day) and where historical values are not required.  When overused, Persistent properties can put significant pressure on the database layer of your ThingWorx implementation, leading to poor performance of your IOT application.  As the number of Things in your IOT application scales up, the quantity or frequency of persistent properties per Thing needs to be carefully considered.   Logged Properties are best used for telemetry data where historical values need to be retained, but also for any other value that is expected to change frequently.  Logged properties can create some additional requirements: a process for handling null/default values after restarts, more disk space, and a data retention policy. There are benefits as well, though, like more flexibility and scalability for the ingestion of larger volumes of data.   Persistent + Logged Properties perform database operations of both aspects.  Combined use should be very limited – only properties that update infrequently (a few times a day), and that must be in-memory in the event of a ThingWorx restart.   In-Memory Only Properties are neither persistent nor logged – they are not stored to the database.  These properties can greatly improve scale for values that need to be available for the application to drive UIs or compute other derived values that will be stored.  However, high-frequency updates of in-memory properties can create scale challenges in HA (high availability) ThingWorx configurations where memory state needs to be constantly shared between multiple ThingWorx nodes.     Find a complete summary as well as example cases in the document attached.

To setup the Single-Sign On with Windchill, we can just follow steps in Windchill extension guide. However, there is a huge problem to use "Websocket" for EMS or Edge SDKs from devices since Apache for Windchill blocks to pass "ws" or "wss" protocol. It's like a problem of a proxy server. There might be a couple of ways to avoid this issue, but I suggest to change filter-mappings for the SSO filter. When you look at the Windchill extension guide, it says that users set filters for all incoming URLs of ThingWorx by using "/*" filter mappings. Please use below settings for "web.xml" of ThingWorx server to avoid the problem that I stated above. It looks quite long and complicated, but basically the filter mappings from settings for "AuthenticationFilter" which are already defined by default except "Websocket" related urls. <!-- Windchill Extension SSO Start--> <filter> <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name> <filter-class>com.ptc.connected.plm.thingworx.wc.idp.client.filter.IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-class> <init-param> <param-name>idpLoginUrl</param-name> <param-value>http(s)://<SERVERHOSTURL>/Windchill/wtcore/jsp/genIdKey.jsp</param-value> </init-param> </filter> <filter-mapping>   <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>   <url-pattern>/extensions/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/action-authenticate/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/action-login/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/action-confirm-creds/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/action-change-password/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ThingworxMain.html</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ThingworxMain.html/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Server/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ApplicationKeys/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Networks/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Dashboards/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/DirectoryServices/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Authenticators/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/PersistenceProviderPackages/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/tunnel/wsadapter.jsp</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/tunnel/adapter.jsp</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Logs/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Resources/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Subsystems/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Users/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Home/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/StateDefinitions/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/StyleDefinitions/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ScriptFunctionLibraries/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/AtomFeedService/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/DataShapes/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Importer/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ImageEncoder/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Exporter/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ExportDatabase/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ExportTheme/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ExportDefaultEntities/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ImportDatabase/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/DataExporter/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/DataImporter/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Widgets/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Groups/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ThingPackages/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Things/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ThingTemplates/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ThingShapes/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/DataTags/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ModelTags/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Composer/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Squeal/index.html</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Runtime/index.html</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Mashups/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Menus/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/MediaEntities/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/loaders/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/demos/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ExtensionPackageUploader/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ExtensionPackages/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/FileRepositoryUploader/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/FileRepositoryDownloader/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/FileRepositories/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/xmpp/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/LocalizationTables/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Organizations/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/RemoteTunnel/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderAuthenticationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/PersistenceProviders/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping> <filter> <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name> <filter-class>com.ptc.connected.plm.thingworx.wc.idp.client.filter.IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-class> <init-param> <param-name>keyValidationUrl</param-name> <param-value>http(s)://<SERVERHOSTURL>/Windchill/login/validateIdKey.jsp</param-value> </init-param> </filter> <filter-mapping>   <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>   <url-pattern>/extensions/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/action-authenticate/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/action-login/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/action-confirm-creds/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/action-change-password/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ThingworxMain.html</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ThingworxMain.html/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Server/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ApplicationKeys/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Networks/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Dashboards/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/DirectoryServices/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Authenticators/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/PersistenceProviderPackages/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/tunnel/wsadapter.jsp</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/tunnel/adapter.jsp</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Logs/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Resources/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Subsystems/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Users/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Home/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/StateDefinitions/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/StyleDefinitions/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ScriptFunctionLibraries/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/AtomFeedService/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/DataShapes/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Importer/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ImageEncoder/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Exporter/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ExportDatabase/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ExportTheme/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ExportDefaultEntities/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ImportDatabase/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/DataExporter/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/DataImporter/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Widgets/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Groups/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ThingPackages/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Things/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ThingTemplates/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ThingShapes/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/DataTags/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ModelTags/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Composer/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Squeal/index.html</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Runtime/index.html</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Mashups/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Menus/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/MediaEntities/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/loaders/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/demos/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ExtensionPackageUploader/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/ExtensionPackages/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/FileRepositoryUploader/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/FileRepositoryDownloader/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/FileRepositories/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/xmpp/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/LocalizationTables/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/Organizations/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/RemoteTunnel/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping>   <filter-mapping>     <filter-name>IdentityProviderKeyValidationFilter</filter-name>     <url-pattern>/PersistenceProviders/*</url-pattern>   </filter-mapping> <!-- Windchill Extension SSO End-->

Those who have been working with ThingWorx for many years will have noticed the work done around ingress stress testing and performance optimization.  Adding InfluxDB as a time-series data persistence provider really helped level up these capabilities while simultaneously decreasing the overall resources required by the infrastructure.  However with this ease comes a hidden challenge: query and data processing performance to work it into something useful.   Often It's Too Much Data In general most customers that I work with want to collect far too much data -- without knowing what it will be used for, or what processing will be required in order to make it usable and useful.  This is a trap in general with how many people envision IoT projects, being told by infrastructure providers that cloud storage and compute resources are abundant and cheap and that they should get as much data as possible.  This buildup of data means that more effort needs to be spent working it into something useful (data engineering/feature extraction) and addressing common data issues (quality, gaps, precision, etc.).  This might be fine for mature companies with large data analytics teams; however this is a makeup that I've only seen in the largest of our customers.  Some advice - figure out what you need and how you'll use it, and then collect that.  Work on extracting value today rather than hoping that extra data collected  now will provide some insights years from now.   Example - Problem Statement You got your Thing Model designed, and edge devices connected.  Now you've got data flowing in and being stored every 5 seconds in InfluxDB.  Great progress!  Now on to building the applications which cover the various use cases. The raw data is most likely going to need to be processed and potentially even significantly transformed into other information in order to make it useful.  Turning a "powered on and running" BOOLEAN to an "hour meter" INTEGER is a simple example.  Then you may need to provide a report showing equipment run time hours by day over a month.  The maintenance team may also have asked to look for usage patterns which lead to breakdowns, requiring extracting other data points from the initial one like number of daily starts, average daily run time, average time between restarts. The problem here is that unless you have prepared these new data points and stored them as well (say in a Stream), you are going to have to build these data sets on the fly, and that can be time and resource intensive and not give you the response time expected.  As you can imagine, repeatedly querying and processing large volumes of unchanging raw data is going to have resource and time implications - so this is why data collection and data use need to be thought about separately.   Data Engineering In the above examples, the key is actually creating new data points which are calculated progressively throughout normal operation.  This not only makes the information that you want available when you need it - in the right format - but it also significantly reduces resource requirements by constantly reprocessing raw data.  It also helps managing data purging, because as you create and store usable insights, you can eventually just archive away your old raw data streams.   Direct Database Queries vs. Thingworx Data Services Despite the above being a rule of thumb, sometimes a simple well structured database query can get you exactly what you need and do so quite quickly.  This is especially true for InfluxDB when working with extremely large time-series datasets.  The challenge here is that ThingWorx persistence providers abstract away the complexity of writing ones own database queries, so we can't easily get at the databases raw power and are forced to query back more data than needed and work it into a usable format in memory (which is not fast).   Leveraging the InfluxDB API using the ContentLoader Technique As InfluxDBs API is 100% REST, we can access it using in-built ThingWorx Content Loader services.  Check out this demonstration and explanation video where I talk about how to interact directly with InfluxDB in order to crush massive time-series data and get back much more usable and manageable data sets.  It is important to note here that you should use a read-only database user here, as you should never modify the ThingWorx databases to avoid untested scenarios which may lead to data corruption.   Optimizing ThingWorx query performance with the InfluxDB REST API - YouTube InfluxToolBox ThingWorx demo project (by T. Wobben)      

In our interactions with PTC customers we often learn they have previously performed Analytics modeling in Python, Matlab, R, or even built home grown analyses in languages such as Java or C++. As expected, when adopting an Industrial Innovation Platform such as ThingWorx that also has its own ThingWorx Analytics module, customers do not want to reimplement everything from scratch and would rather integrate their previous work in the Smart Applications built in ThingWorx, leveraging a combination of their existing toolset together with ThingWorx Analytics modeling. That is certainly possible and there are multiple ways to do that. In this article we will focus on several general ways to make that happen, but it is important to keep in mind that language specific approaches are also possible and we are happy to discuss those in the specific context of the customer.   Here are five different ways to bring existing Analytics into ThingWorx: If the task is to reuse an existing predictive model developed in a language such as Python/R/Matlab, typically one can export that model in PMML (Predictive Model Markup Language), an xml format, and import it in ThingWorx Analytics using the AnalyticsServer_ResultsThing -> UploadModel service. Libraries such as sklearn2pmml & r2pmml can be utilized towards that goal. The imported model can then be used in the same fashion as a ThingWorx Analytics developed model to power smart applications built in ThingWorx. If the Analysis involves more complex tasks than Predictive Modeling, such as custom data normalizations or non-standard Machine Learning models or home grown algorithms, one can use the options below. Call the ThingWorx exposed REST Web API from Python/Matlab/R/Java/Javascript. Every service from ThingWorx can be called that way, and the API can also be used to push analyses results into ThingWorx for further consumption, perhaps together with other sources of data such as sensor readings, in the smart applications built there. The documentation for the ThingWorx REST API can be found here.  Expose the existing Analytics via using a thin layer of REST Web Services. For example, in Python, this can be done using Flask, with few lines of code. Then, the orchestration can happen from ThingWorx by calling the exposed Web Service and weaving the results back into smart applications. Often our customers' current architecture involves a relational database (e.g. SQL Server, Oracle, etc) that is powering the existing Analytics, and stores the end results (predictions, correlations, etc). In this scenario, we can connect ThingWorx directly to that database to read these results.  Finally, in the case of complex Analytics, where a tighter integration with ThingWorx is desired, existing Analytics / algorithms can be wrapped into a ThingWorx Extension or an Analytics Provider using the corresponding PTC SDKs.  When choosing an integration option, customers need to carefully balance complexity of integration, constraints of their architecture, Analytics modeling complexity, as well as end user consumption requirements.

  Sunshine, beach chairs & ThingWorx 9.2. What more could you need for your summer essentials?   Targeted for June 2021, our next release features intelligent one-click deploy with Solution Central*, new web components, and an enhanced IAM integration!   Let’s dive deeper into each.   Deploy an entire solution in one click with Solution Central’s intelligent one-click deploy. Good news: you followed a modular design pattern and broke up your application into smaller libraries and components. You can now enjoy easier maintenance and re-use of your app. Bad news: your app now has 10 different dependencies, with differing versions, each with a required order to import into ThingWorx. Now, try to share these modules with colleagues, or use them on environments where code may already exist. Not exactly a day at the beach, right? Fear not, one-click deploy has you covered. You click the button, we spin through and find the right dependencies, the right versions, the right order and load them all into the target platform upon a deploy request. Solution Central  one-click deploy means more sun and sand for you! Check out this post to learn more about what’s available in Solution Central 3.0! Intelligent One-Click Deploy with Solution Central Enhance your solutions with our latest web components! Imagine this: you’re a systems developer at a large parts manufacturer and your boss has asked for a detailed analysis of downtime over the last six months. Not to worry! ThingWorx 9.2 features a new waterfall chart that can be leveraged to understand dynamics in defect counts, loss reasons, time bottlenecks and other conditions. Be sure to try it out! And, while you’re at it, try out our new web components that are available now as preview: a toolbar to add key like filtering at the top of your screen or data intensive widgets (e.g., grids), a more flexible grid and a fancy new paradigm for interface developers. These three preview widgets are fully functional and tested in 9.2. Preview widgets will graduate in a future release when we add all planned functionality or address any perceived usability feedback.​ Don’t be afraid—it just means more good things are coming. Surf’s up, you can use these widgets safely now!​ New Waterfall Widget Coming in ThingWorx 9.2 Leverage new integrations with Azure Active Directory for more seamless user management. In prior releases we have offered integration to Azure Active Directory and SSO through Central Authorization Service type products or through custom authenticator extensions to ThingWorx.  With our new Azure AD integration, you can cut the custom extensions and additional software out of the picture.  We now accept direct SAML assertions from Azure AD directly to ThingWorx platform, which makes it that much easier to deploy your app in your organization’s SSO flow.  It’s as smooth as that frosty tropical drink when the sun goes down.   Like what you see? Want to try it out for yourself? ThingWorx 9.2 is targeted for June 2021, so be sure to keep a lookout on the horizon. Bump, set, spike!   Stay cool & connected, Kaya

ThingWorx community,   As part of a continuous re-evaluation of our third-party software requirements, we regularly add and remove support for versions of operating systems, persistence providers, and web browsers.   On this note, we are planning to end support for Ubuntu 18.04 beginning with the ThingWorx release targeted for mid-CY2022. Per its release cycle, Ubuntu will move version 18.04 into Extended Security Maintenance at this point, meaning it will no longer receive regular maintenance updates.   PTC will continue to support Ubuntu 20.04 for the immediate future and will consider supporting Ubuntu 22.04 once it becomes Generally Available (GA).   Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.   Regards,   Walter Haydock ThingWorx Product Management

ThingWorx community,   As part of a continuous re-evaluation of our third-party software requirements, we regularly add and remove support for versions of operating systems, persistence providers, and web browsers.   On this note, for the ThingWorx release after 9.2 (currently targeted for the end of CY 2021), we are planning to end support for Windows Server 2016. Already five years old, this product has generally been replaced by Windows Server 2019 in common usage.   As per Microsoft’s published lifecycle, this version will be going out of "Mainstream Support" approximately one year after the aforementioned ThingWorx release. PTC will continue to support Windows Server 2019 for the immediate future, and will consider supporting Windows Server 2022 once it becomes Generally Available (GA).   Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.   Regards,   Walter Haydock ThingWorx Product Management