1 Introduction to ETP

Energistics Transport Protocol (ETP) is a data exchange specification that enables the efficient transfer of real-time data between applications. ETP has been specifically envisioned and designed to meet the unique needs of the upstream oil and gas industry and, more specifically, to facilitate the exchange of data in the EnergyML family of data standards, which includes WITSML, PRODML, and RESQML. Initially designed to be part of the WITSML specification, ETP is now part of the Energistics Common Technical Architecture (CTA).

One of the goals of ETP is to replace TCP/IP WITS level 0 data transfers with a more efficient and simple-to-implement alternative.

The three main initial use cases for ETP are to move real-time data between applications, including:

• Transfer from a wellsite provider to a WITSML store (server)
• Transfer of data from WITSML store to WITSML store (replication)

• Transfer of data from WITSML store to client applications

ETP defines a publish/subscribe mechanism so that data receivers do not have to poll for data and can receive new data as soon as they are available from a data provider.

ETP is being expanded beyond real-time data transfer to include functionality for data discovery and historical data queries. It has been designed to work with multiple data models; for example, ETP is now the underlying protocol for WITSML v2.0 (replacing the SOAP API of previous versions of WITSML) and can be used to transfer data from WITSML v1.4.1.1, RESQML, and PRODML. (Separate implementation specifications will explain how to use ETP with these various data models.)