2025 Planning

WoT Profiles

Definition

“A [profile is a] technical specification which provides a set of assertions such that any Consumer which conforms with the those assertions is out-of-the-box interoperable with any Thing which also conforms with those assertions.”

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– WoT Architecture 1.1 (W3C Recommendation)

See WoT Profiles Abstract and Introduction for more detail on the current understanding of what a Profile is.

Question

Should we:

• Continue to pursue the existing WoT Profiles 1.0 specification along the recommendation track

OR

• Publish WoT Profiles 1.0 as a non-normative Working Group Note and start to work on use cases & requirements for WoT Profiles 2.0 instead?

Working Draft: https://www.w3.org/TR/wot-profile/

Profiles 1.0

Latest Editor’s Draft: https://w3c.github.io/wot-profile/

Issues with WoT Profiles 1.0

• Extends as well as constrains what is possible with a Thing Description alone
• E.g. defines protocol bindings which couldn’t be described using a binding template
• Is limited by the features of Thing Description 1.x
• E.g. Lack of dynamic resources and manageable affordances
• Not enough implementations
• ..?

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-wot-wg/2024Feb/0000.html

Profiles 2.0 - Strawman Proposal

Profiles 2.0 - Strawman Proposal

A simpler and more structured approach:

• Move content of protocol binding sections into Binding Templates as defaults, referenced from Profiles
• Core specification which defines the profiling mechanism and a registry of profiles
• Individual profile documents constrain specific extension points of Thing Descriptions (protocol bindings, payload bindings, security mechanisms, link relation types, semantic contexts, discovery mechanisms?, data schemas?)

1.0 Recommendation

Pros:

• Interoperability for WoT 1.x specifications

Cons:

• Either extends other WoT 1.x specifications or is very limited in features
• May not be worth publishing if it doesn’t go much beyond HTTP binding in TD spec

1.0 Working Group Note

Pros:

• Don’t waste time refining and publishing something that may not get implemented
• Profiles 2.0 could work better with Binding Templates and benefit from TD 2.0 features

Cons:

• Lack of normative interoperability for WoT 1.x specifications

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Persevere or Pivot?

Proposed Resolution

“The WoT Profiles Task Force will aim to publish WoT Profiles 1.0 as a Candidate Recommendation by October 2025”

OR

“The WoT Profiles Task Force will aim to publish WoT Profiles 1.0 as a Working Group Note by July 2025 and write Use Cases & Requirements for WoT Profiles 2.0 by October 2025”

Next Steps

• Propose our resolution by email today with a view to passing the resolution in the WoT Main call next week
• Hold a meeting next week to triage issues and create a more detailed plan
• Propose meetings every two weeks after that, with most collaboration happening asynchronously on GitHub

Collaborations

• Use Cases Task Force (for high level use cases relevant to Profiles)
• Thing Description & Bindings Task Force (to explore moving existing protocol bindings from profiles to binding documents as defaults, and making profiles and binding documents work together more nicely)
• Web Thing Protocol Community Group (to try to provide consistency between Profiles and the WebSocket sub-protocol where relevant)

Thank You

github.com/w3c/wot-profile

#profiles on WoT Community Discord