Terminology

From Open Source Automation Wiki

Open Source Automation may be a little confusing for someone just getting started so we have made a list of much of the terminology used in OSA and their explanation.

Object	The Open Source Automation project is completely object oriented. Everything throughout the system is an object. Objects can represent anything like lights, doors, rooms, screens and users.
Methods	Methods are basically commands that you can tell an object to execute. For example if a basic light will have an ON and OFF method. When either of those methods is called, the light will turn on or off.
Events	Conditions defined in an object that can cause other things to happen in OSA.
State	Every object has a single state that it can be in. This state can be one of a list of values such as "Home" Away" or "Sleep".
Properties	An object can have only one state but it can have many properties as defined in the object type.
Object Type	An object template from which instances of objects are derived from. All objects (instances) will inherit their available state, properties, methods and events from the object type.
Base Object Type	A base object type may have other object types cloned from it. If the Base Object Type changes the cloned objects do NOT inherit the changes automatically. User interfaces and external applications can use the base object type to know the common features of a device even if some devices may have extra features that are specific to a plugin.
Scripts	A user defined set of commands that are triggered to run and perform custom operations. Each script is given a name.
Event Script	Object events can be tied to a script name that will be run when the event occurs.
Type Event Script	An object type event script is triggered when an event from any object of a given type occurs.
Pattern	A pattern is another way to refer to a named script. It gives OSA another way to run a given script. It is used with voice recognition commands so the same named script can be triggered by different variations of voice commands such as "Current Weather" and "What is the weather like" both triggering the same named script.
Plugin	Adds capabilities to OSA such as communicating with new types of devices. Plugins are DLLs developed using the .NET programming languages.
Container	Something that hold objects. Used to group or organize the objects.
Place	A special Container. Put objects in a Place such as "Master Bedroom" if you want them to appear on the Home screen of the Mobile Web UI