Connecting EIB components to distributed Java applications

This paper describes an architecture called `EIBAgents for Java´ that enables Java applications to access EIB (European Installation Bus) components. The architecture is abstract to allow open and flexible extensions of the EIB agent architecture. It is divided into three major Java base classes called EIBAgent, EIBReceiver and EIBEiblet. The EIBAgent is the actual interface that provides methods for accessing EIB group objects. EIBAgents can be implemented to access an EIB system via communication mechanisms such as serial communication (RS-232) or TCP/IP socket communication. EIBReceivers are described as the request forwarder to EIBAgent implementations and can be used to forward requests across different EIBAgent servers. EIBEiblets are applet style pieces of Java code that implement logical behavior or graphical user interfaces for the EIB system. The paper also shows a sample of a distributed Java application that uses the EIB agent architecture to access an EIB system from various platforms