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specification. It serves as an information exchange EASY TO ADAPT TO CHANGING REQUIREMENTS forum for users, manufacturers and system providers, What’s key to the Service-Oriented Architecture test houses and standardization bodies. is that the service interface is independent of the implementation. Application developers or system DEALING WITH THE ABSENCE OF STANDARDS integrators can build applications by composing The European Smart Metering Industry Group (ESMIG) one or more services without knowing the services’ supports the implementation of comprehensive open underlying implementations. standards for metering and communications, which means that research and investment are on the rise. Services relating to different legacy systems can be Nevertheless, challenges to interoperability persist encapsulated in order to keep them isolated from since there are a number of proprietary systems on other services. This means that SOA services can the market, each with its own limitations regarding the remain unchanged despite technological changes in ability to communicate with other residential meters the background, providing the opportunity to introduce or IT systems. It is still common to find that standards new technologies without disturbing the current SOA. haven’t been implemented to cover all systems, or that standardization processes are struggling to keep pace Traditionally, integration between the systems has with the industry’s rapid development. consisted of billing data being transferred between the smart metering system and a utility’s system in a flat This means that the solution vendor needs to be file. This was sufficient in the past, but today both the able to provide interoperability to its customers amount of data and the number of functionalities have without being able to rely only on standards. Solid, grown. Examples include new metering data, consumer service-oriented AMM system architecture is crucial, load management functions, changes in the billing especially in the absence of standards. Service- cycle and in tariff setting as well as network monitoring. Oriented Architecture (SOA) provides the opportunity to In addition to integrating the AMM system into the gather and standardize heterogeneous functionalities utility’s system for information sharing, AMM system – even from different legacy systems. SOA is a software architecture should enable a deeper level of integration architecture design pattern based on separate units and interoperability between the systems. Combining of software that provide application functionality as the AMM system sub-services is the smart solution services to other applications. A service is a self- for creating customized business processes tailor- contained unit of functionality, such as retrieving the made to the needs of individual utility customers. billing data for an individual customer.