A connection describes that two parts are linked with each other. In the context of the digital twin layer, we use the term connection to describe the integration of your service instance with other endpoints/servers.

You can configure connections to various endpoints:

Bosch IoT Hub (via Apache Kafka) - this is the device connectivity layer of your Bosch IoT Device Management instance - the recommended way for device connectivity - bi-directional
Bosch IoT Insights (via HTTP) - this is the device data visualization service of the Bosch IoT Suite - via HTTP - outgoing only
AMQP endpoints using AMQP 1.0 or AMQP 0.9.1 (e.g. RabbitMQ, Solace, Azure Service Bus) - bi-directional
MQTT endpoints using MQTT 3.1.1 or MQTT 5 (e.g. Eclipse Mosquitto, HiveQM) - bi-directional
AWS IoT MQTT - bi-directional
Apache Kafka - bi-directional
HTTP - outgoing only

Additionally, any WebSocket connection can be opened ad-hoc but is not stored at the solution, nor is it visible in your list of connections.

By subscribing to Bosch IoT Device Management you will automatically get access to two connections, which are already configured - Device Management and Devices via Bosch IoT Hub.

When a managed connection is opened or gracefully closed, a respective announcement can be sent.
The configuration option per connection to activate/deactivate publishing of such announcements is available in the Connections UI tab as well as via API.

Details in this section

Further examples

The digital twin layer provides payload mapping functionality. Thus, you can map incoming messages to payload conforming the Eclipse Ditto protocol and vice versa.

Find details at https://www.eclipse.org/ditto/connectivity-overview.html.