Data Fabric Architecture with InterSystems IRIS

What is Data Fabric?

“It is a set of hardware infrastructure, software, tools and resources to implement, administer, manage and execute data operations in the company, including, acquisition, transformation, storage, distribution, integration, replication, availability, security, protection , disaster recovery, presentation, analysis, preservation, retention, backup, recovery, archiving, recall, deletion, monitoring and capacity planning, across all data storage platforms and enabling application use to meet the company's data needs company". 
(Alan McSweeney)

The Data Fabric is a new way to operate the data using all resources and technology innovations available to get business value, including multimodel databases, Analytics, AI, ESB/SOA, microservices and API Management.

Data Fabric principles

Alan McSweeney listed the following principles when using Data Fabric:

	Administration, management and control - maintain control and be able to manage and administer data, regardless of where it is located			Stability, reliability and consistency - common tools and utilities used to deliver a stable and reliable Data Fabric across all layers
	Security - Security standards across the Data Fabric, governance automation, compliance and risk management			Open, flexible and free choice - ability to choose and change data storage, access and location
	Automation - automated management and maintenance activities, DevOps and DevSecOps			Performance, recovery, access and use - applications and users can gain access to data when needed, as needed and in a format in which it is usable
	Integration - All components interoperate together at all layers

Data Fabric Architecture

McSweeney designed a conceptual diagram to detail Data Fabric into an organization, see:

You can see that is needed some technologies to get a fluid data input, processing and output operating toghether to "fabric" the data and deliver business value to the data consumers. These elements can be resumed by this diagram:

The operation of the data is in Data Intake Gateway, using ESB and API Gateway technology  to capture, orchestrate, transform, enrich and integrate data assets into to corporate data assets.

The result of the data operation is consumed using Analytics and AI to allows data consumers to get the insights.

The multimodel repositories are key player too, because the volume and variety of the data and the requirement of "golden data", the "single channel of truth".

InterSystems IRIS and the Data Fabric

The InterSystems IRIS is a Data Fabric platform thats enable a Data Fabric architecture into the organizations, see:

DATA FABRIC COMPONENT		​INTERSYSTEMS IRIS COMPONENT
​Multi-Purpose Repository		​IRIS Database
		Supported SQL Relational object in Java, Python, .NET and Object Script NoSQL to JSON – DocDB Analytical with MDX cubes Shards support to enable Big Data (same as MongoDB) Corporate Cache – ECP MDM implemented via Integration Bus RBAC, Cryptography and Labeling Transanalytic and Data Lake JDBC, ODBC or native SQL access with ORM for Object Script
​Data Intake / Gateway via Integration Bus / Service Bus and API Gateway		IRIS Interoperability
		REST API and API Management Data Bus - SOA, EAI, ESB Integration and EDI Adapters Flow Automation - BPL and DTL, Rules Native integration with Java, .NET and C Python and JavaScript MFT - Managed File Transfer Messaging, Events and JMS IoT with MQTT / API
Data Extraction / Ingestion, Transformation and Loading
Analysis and Reporting Utilities		IRIS Analytics
		BI / Analytical and ETL (BPL / DTL) Hierarchical Panels, Analysis and Pivots SQL, MDX and Power BI Connectors Access Reports and Embedded Reports UIMA - Analysis of unstructured contente Semantic and sentiment analysis Real-time or scheduled analytics AutoML – IntegratedML IA / ML with R or Pyhton NLP - Natural language processing Statistical in R, Python and Object Script Data Bus and Cognitive Flows Text Analytics PMML Adaptive Operational Analytics (AtScale) User Portal
AI utilities

Conclusion

The InterSystems IRIS is not a simple database, or interoperability platform, it is a central player to get your Data Fabric. If you use another solutions from other companies, you need buy 4 to 7 solutions, but with InterSystems you create your Data Fabric with only solution, composed by multimodel DB, ESB/APIM, Analytics and AI. It is cheaper and more simple to you.

Learn more in: https://pt.slideshare.net/alanmcsweeney/designing-an-enterprise-data-fabric