Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) 1

General Introduction. 1

Configuration. 3

Runtime. 4

Client Tools. 5

Maintenance/Updates. 5

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

General Introduction

What does SmartData Fabric do?

SmartData Fabric helps solve most data access, integration, sharing, and interoperability challenges faced by organizations in an innovative and unique way. 

SDF combines the best of data warehousing and conventional federated data access and overcome the worst of these approaches. SDF enables true virtual data warehousing in distributed federated data systems, with aspects of virtual operational data stores and virtual data marts.

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What are the different configurations of SDF?

The following are the data source adapter configurations that deal with specific data sources:

• EIQ Indexed Adapter
• EIQ Hybrid Adapter
• EIQ Conventional Adapter

The EIQ Federation Server configuration handles query distribution and results consolidation across the adapters.

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When do I use EIQ Indexed Adapter, EIQ Hybrid Adapter , and EIQ Conventional Adapter?

EIQ Indexed Adapter: to provide clean and standardized indexes (based on a standard data model) when data in a data source is not clean and for additional query processing capabilities that a data source is not equipped to handle.

EIQ Hybrid Adapter : to provide clean and standardized indexes (based on a standard data model) when data in a data source is not clean and for additional query processing capabilities that a data source is not equipped to handle and to submit standardized queries (based on a standard data model) to a data source for query execution simultaneously. This configuration significantly reduces the processing necessary compared to an EIQ Indexed Adapter.

EIQ Conventional Adapter: to submit standardized queries (based on a standard data model) to a data source for query execution.

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What data sources can SDF work with?

SDF works with various data sources including any major DBMS (SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Teradata, MS Access, etc.), files and archives (of numerous types including MS Office), e-mail, web services, and web content.

EIQ Adapters™ utilize standard drivers such as ODBC, JDBC, and Web Services to connect. Custom connectors can also be developed very quickly for unusual data sources.

WhamTech JavaGateway provides access to JDBC/Java-dependent data sources.

WhamTech WhamSearch Intelligent Spider provides access to the web documents.

SDF can also work with cloud/big data systems such as Hadoop/HBase and EMC Greenplum.

 

What are the various components of SDF?

SDF comes with:

• Runtime server components for profiling, transforming, indexing and query processing, federation, updating indexes, and etc.
• Tools for data analysts
• Tools for administrators
• SDK for developers.

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What developer components are provided in SDF?

The developer SDK includes the following APIs for client applications:

• JDBC Driver
• ODBC Driver
• OLE-DB Driver
• C/C++

In addition, configuration APIs are available for integration with third-party configurations and administration tools.

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What add-on functionality is available?

• Cloud EIQT - scalable external indexing and query processing for cloud/big data
• Link Indexes™ - Link mapping and link analysis across multiple data sources
• Advanced Text Search
• Indexed Views (Materialized Views)
• E-discovery
• Entity Extraction
• Fuzzy Matching
• Distributed Analytics
• Mainframe Data File Access and Query

 

What are SDF system requirements?

SDF software runs on 64-bit Windows, Linux RHEL/CentOS, and IBM Power 8 platforms.

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What SQL query syntax does SDF configurations support?

SDF incorporates open source and popular PostgreSQL as query server and has extensive support for SQL SEELCT statement.

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Configuration

How does SDF work with common data models, standard data models, and canonicals?

All SDF configurations support common data models. Users can import models and use them to map individual data source columns to common data model columns. EIQ Federation Server automatically maps its common data model columns to all the mapped columns in the EIQ Indexed Adapters/EIQ Conventional Adapters in a deployment system.

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What support does SDF provide for Information/Entity Extraction?

SDF uses the popular open source software GATE (General Architecture for Text Engineering) for handling advanced analytics on unstructured text.

SDF provides structure to unstructured data by allowing users to extract entities out of unstructured text in structured data sources (memo/text columns) as well as from unstructured data sources (files, web pages).

Users can do complex structured queries (JOINs etc.) on the extracted data by combining with other structured data.

WhamTech WhamEE (WhamTech Entity Extraction) server provides the entity extraction functionality.

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How does Link Indexing work?

Link Indexes help find obvious and non-obvious links between data from across multiple data sources while not requiring the movement of data into a single database system.

In a federated EIQ deployment, the links are formed between records from EIQ Indexed Adapter indexes associated with data sources based on matching values for given entities.

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What are virtual keys and non-virtual keys and how do I use them?

Non-virtual keys are very similar to typical database index keys - they contain index trees, lists, and associated data for a column. Unlike non-virtual keys, virtual keys are data-less; they contain index trees and lists but not the associated data.

Typical SDF installations use virtual keys for all columns except for primary key (PK) and foreign key (FK) columns.

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How are EIQ Indexed Adapter indexes kept in sync with changes in data sources?

An EIQ Indexed Adapter uses its own indexes on data from the associated data source. These indexes are updated in real-time as data changes in the data source.

SDF supports several ways of updating the indexes and comes with several tools to help with the process.

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In the EIQ Server Configuration tool, under the ‘Dicationary Mapping' tab, when I try to map a field, I get an error message saying "Can't map column <ColumnName> with index data type <Type1> to business data view column name <BDVColumn> with data type <Type2>".

Columns with different data types in different data sources cannot be given the same business data view column name. You can either give a different business data view column name for each, or click "Edit Business Data Dictionary" and change the default data-type for the specific business data view column name.

 

Runtime

When I start the WhamTech EIQ Server service through the Windows Services panel, it does not start and shows an error 'The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion'.

This could happen due to a number of reasons. For more information about the exact causes of error, open the EIQ Diagnostics Tool from "Start Menu > WhamTech EIQ Server Suite". Open the Diagnostics window for 'EIQ_Server' and try restarting the service.

 

In the EIQ Diagnostics Tool, no diagnostic information is printed in the EIQ_Server window, even though my Server is running and should be printing information.

Make sure you only have one window for the EIQ_Server application open in the Diagnostics tool. Also, in some cases you might have to close and re-open the window for diagnostic information to be printed.

 

EIQ Server service takes a very long time to start.

Check if the data source servers (SQL Server/Oracle/DB2, etc.) to which the EIQ Server data sources are connected are up and running. Keep the EIQ Diagnostics Tool running for the 'EIQ_Server' application for more information.

 

Client Tools

The query execution fails with the message "<ColumnName> is not a column in the Business Data View"?

Check if the column names used in the query are business data view column names defined in the 'Dictionary Mapping' tab of the EIQ Server Configuration Tool. You can also get a list of available column names by executing 'schema columns' in the query tool window.

 

I do not see results from all the data sources being displayed when I query a Virtual Data Source (VDS) having more than one data source.

Check the "AggregateRowSetLimit" and "DatasourceRowsetLimit" settings values in the 'Advanced Settings' tab in the EIQ Server Configuration tool. For no limitation on the number of records displayed in the result set (from each datasource/aggregate), change these values to 0 (zero).

 

Maintenance/Updates

When I try replacing the binary files in "C:\Program Files\WhamTech\bin" with an updated set, the system gives an error saying "cannot copy <Filename>. It is being used by another person or program". How can I fix this?

Before you start replacing the binaries, always make sure that the WhamTech Windows Services are in stopped state (SDFPostgreSQL, EIQ Server and EIQ RTIS). Also, ensure that no WhamTech tools are running (EIQ Server RTI Tool, EIQ Diagnostics Tool, etc.).

 

How do I troubleshoot components?

Use the EIQ Diagnostics Tool to trace the problem component(s).

For SDF query server and clients, use PostgreSQL logging.
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