IPA - the Internet Protocol for Alarm Management

Transport

Data is transmitted as XML encoded messages using a transport protocol similar to HTTP. The main difference from HTTP is that IPA is asynchronous. Message encoding is UTF-8.

Example session

The client connects to server and sends the following request:

PUT / IPA/1.0
Content-Length: 52

<TextMessage Id="100" To="123">Testing</TextMessage>

If an acknowledgement was requested (and it was, in this case), the server eventually responds with:

PUT / IPA/1.0
Content-Length: 35

<Ack Id="100" Result="200">OK</Ack>

Transport protocol

The purpose of the transport protocol is to let the receiver know where messages start and end.

Part Example Description
Command 
PUT / IPA/1.0
  
Headers 
Content-Length: 52
  
Separator   Empty line
Message 
<TextMessage Id="100" To="123">Testing</TextMessage>
 XML data

Requirements

  • The command is always PUT, path is always root and protocol is IPA/1.0
  • Content-Length is mandatory.
  • Other header fields may be added, but the other end may not be able to interpret them.
  • XML data is either sent as pure 7-bit ASCII, or UTF-8