A Survey on IoT Programming Platforms: A Business-Domain Experts Perspective

Abstract

The vast growth and digitalization potential offered by the Internet of Things (IoT) is hindered by substantial barriers in accessibility, interoperability, and complexity, mainly affecting small organizations and non-technical entities. This survey paper provides a detailed overview of the landscape of IoT programming platforms, focusing specifically on the development support they offer for varying end-user profiles, ranging from developers with IoT expertise to business experts willing to take advantage of IoT solutions to automate their organization processes. The survey examines a range of IoT platforms, classified according to their programming approach between general-purpose programming solutions, model-driven programming, mashups and end-user programming. Necessary IoT and programming backgrounds are described to empower non-technical readers with a comprehensive field summary. In addition, the paper compares the features of the most representative platforms and provides decision insights and guidelines to support end-users in selecting appropriate IoT platforms for their use cases. This work contributes to narrowing the knowledge gap between IoT specialists and end users, breaking accessibility barriers and further promoting the integration of IoT technologies in various domains.