## 3 Conceptual Design
### General Architecture  
The IIP, which plays the service broker role, primarily aims to be deployed in the cloud for global reachability, although it is possible to deploy it in a closed environment, such as in smart homes. Figure 1: (**a**) Point-to-point “silo” integration; (**b**) Brokered converged integration. RESTful web service interfaces are used facing both information providers (_i.e._, devices) and information consumers (_i.e._, Internet-based services), as they are widely used within the web domain. Figure 2a shows the main functionalities of the IIP. In general, the IIP provides RESTful web service interfaces for both information providers (service providers from the SOA standpoint) and information consumers (service consumers from the SOA perspective) that manage the information flow from information providers to information consumers. These resources are divided into two categories with two main web resource-based uniform resource identifiers (URIs), namely https://root/provider/ and https://root/consumer/. The root part of the URI refers to the domain of the specific IIP deployment. Information is managed in different information channels, and information providers should initially create information channels before being able to pass through information they gather. The IIP provides resources for information providers to register new information channels with varying parameters, to list their information channels, to update/modify their information channels, to publish new information to their information channels and to delete/remove their information channels. In addition, the IIP provides resources for information consumers to list existing information channels, to subscribe to existing information channels, to update/modify their subscriptions to existing information channels and to delete/remove their subscriptions to existing information channels. When an information consumer subscribes to an existing information channel, it should provide a notification uniform resource locator (URL), which acts as an end-point for IIP to deliver notifications of newly published information from an information provider who owns that particular information channel. An information provider can register many information channels, but an information channel can only be associated with one information provider (_i.e._, the owner). This makes the relationship between information provider and information channel a one-to-many relationship. On the other hand, an information channel can be accessed/subscribed to by many information consumers, and an information consumer can access/subscribe to many information channels. This makes the relationship between information channel and information consumer a many-to-many relationship. These relationships are shown in Figure 3. An article, which was written earlier by the author, describes  
Figure 2: (**a**) Main functionalities of the information integration platform (IIP); (**b**) Additional functionalities of the IIP. how these functionalities work in a more detailed manner [46], including sequence diagrams and the contents of message exchanges. This work is a continuation of the author's previous work, addressing several aspects in the future work section of the previous article. In addition to the main functionalities as previously described, the IIP provides resources for access control between different credentials within the IIP, as shown in Figure 2b. Since the IIP acts as a broker between information providers and information consumers, dependability becomes a crucial aspect that should be investigated. There are several definitions of dependability, but in general, it is commonly recognized as an integrative concept that encompasses different attributes. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [47] suggested that dependability attributes include reliability, safety, security and availability. [PERSON] _et al_. [48] defined attributes of dependability to comprise availability, reliability, safety, confidentiality, integrity and maintainability.