11. An electronic device comprising: a sensor for generating time-variant data indicative of an environmental condition; a processor; and a memory comprising instructions for causing the processor to encode the time-variant data indicative of the environmental condition using a message format, the message format comprising: one or more resources fields that each identifies a resource to be imported into the time-variant data; one or more records that represent data samples comprising the time-variant data being exchanged in the message; a descriptor field corresponding to at least one respective record of the one or more records and containing metadata describing the time-variant data contained within the at least one record; and a description field having a human-readable string to describe from where the time-variant data samples are derived.
11. An electronic device comprising: a sensor for generating time-variant data indicative of an environmental condition; a processor; and a memory comprising instructions for causing the processor to encode the time-variant data indicative of the environmental condition using a message format, the message format comprising: one or more resources fields that each identifies a resource to be imported into the time-variant data; one or more records that represent data samples comprising the time-variant data being exchanged in the message; a descriptor field corresponding to at least one respective record of the one or more records and containing metadata describing the time-variant data contained within the at least one record; and a description field having a human-readable string to describe from where the time-variant data samples are derived. 15. The electronic device of claim 11 , wherein the descriptor field comprises a type element that is a caller-assigned 16-bit or 32-bit unsigned fixed-point value that represents a type of data present in the stream, wherein the type element applies to field elements found in the descriptor field unless explicitly overridden by another type element contained in a respective field element of the descriptor.