I'm having some trouble understanding why ThingTemplate's are useful or necessary, could someone shed some light on the subject?
(test question)
ThingTemplase allow Inheritance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inheritance_(object-oriented_programming) allowig you to create a template with predefined proerties and methods.
Consider the example in the Training material; I you were deploying drinks vending machines all of those machines would have similar characteristics (number of flavours, location) and services (methods in Java). By using a template you can create all these properties one and then use them many times.