The HEMS expects that applications will be more intelligent than the query processor. Among other functions, the applications will have to be able to identify and parse entity-specific values which may be returned. The details of applications are largely not discussed in the HEMS specifications because there is very little that needs to be standardized. Applications must send requests using the protocols discussed in the next section, but the interfaces the applications provide for displaying monitoring or control information are entirely application dependent. This protocol provides the formatting rules for the queries and their replies.
HEMP runs over a standard transport protocol.
There was a certain amount of debate in the community about what type of transport protocol was best suited for monitoring. The key issue was how reliable monitoring interactions needed to be. Status monitoring is envisioned as occasional retrieval of monitoring information, possibly in response to the receipt of event messages. In these situations, the network is expected to be in good working condition, and monitoring exchanges could probably comfortably work with an unreliable transport protocol. The chance of data loss is small, and probably not a serious problem since the data is unlikely to be so important that it must be reliably delivered.