Quickstart AgileData Terms¶
AgileData contains a number of different terms, understanding these terms should help you get better value out of the using it.
6 Core Capabilities¶
The AgileData App is made up of 7 core capabilities.
Catalog¶
Every-time you do something with data in AgileData the description of that data is automagically stored in the catalog for you, as a tile. Whether you are collecting your data, creating rules to combine your data, rules to validate your data it or rules to make it easily consumable, everything about that data is automatically stored in the catalog for you.
The informationed stored in the catalog can be added to by users. They can add more contaxt about the data. It might be what the data means or how much you can trust the data, think it as gathering wisdom from your crowd of analysts and users.
The Catalog capability enables you to search and find all the data stored in your organisation, understand where the data lives, what the data means and how much you can trust it.
Consume¶
Your users access data that is presented in the Consume area via their favourite tool. This could be a visualisation or reporting tool such Google Data Studio, Mode, Yellowfin, Microsoft PowerBI, Tableau, Thoughtspot or Qlik. Your internal or external systems can access this data via API’s
The Consume area allows you to present your data the way your users expect to see it, including using pretty names for that data rather than complex technical names.
Design¶
You design the way your data should look to align your data with the way your organisation actually works (compared to how your system of record stores the data).
You do this by describing the common Business Concepts and common Business Events that happen within your organisation, for example “Customers Order Products”. You can also quickly capture details of a Concept, while doing the design, for example Customer Names, gender and date of birth.
This design process creates draft Concept and Event tiles.
It removes the need for data architects (or even worse you) spending time creating complex data design documents that then have to be translated into code.
Collect¶
When your data is collected by AgileData we automagically store this data in your History area. As you collect more and more data, AgileData will automatically store this data in the History area for you.
The History area provides an immutable organisational memory of what has happened in your data. It stores a copy of all your data over all time.
Rules¶
Rules are a form of natural language you use to change the way data looks, what it means or test if it is valid. Each time new data is collected and arrives into the History area these rules are automagically triggered and change the data based on the rules you have defined. The Rules remove the need for you to write code to change the way data looks or behaves.
When you create a change rule you automagically populate one of three types of tiles, Concept tiles, Detail tiles or Events tiles with data from the History area. The data that populates these tiles is physically stored, changing the tile from Draft to Active.
This Concept, Detail and Event data allows analysts to resuse them later when, rather than having to define them all fron scratch themselves. Its one component of what is needed to provide the ellusive single source of truth.
The Rules capability is a bit like a commercial kitchen, the consumer doesn’t see the effort required to make the data consumable, and AgileData provides a bunch of recipes (rule templates) to make it easier for you to change your raw data into something that is consumable as well.
Manage¶
AgileData automates as much as possible but there is always a need to keep an eye on how things are going, so we make that simple to.
The Manage area provides you with a view of what loaded when and who used what and when. Its is also wher eyou go to start the process to collect data into the History area.
Key Terminology¶
As well as the 6 core capabilities there are a few other terms that are key to using AgileData.
Concepts¶
Concepts are the terms your organisation uses to describe things that are involved in business transactions facilitated by your organisation.
You can read more about them at Business Concepts
Details¶
Details holds data that describes or provide context for the Concepts your organisation uses to describe things that are involved in business transactions facilitated by your organisation.
You can read more about them at Business Details
Events¶
Events hold data that describes the business transactions facilitated by your organisation.
You can read more about them at Business Events
SaaS Platform¶
SaaS stands for Software as a Service, it describes a commercial model where we provide the software you need, plus the infrastructure (hosting) you need combined with the support your need, for a monthly subscription fee, This means you can just use AgileData to collect, combine and consume your data without worrying about building all the capabilities and technology yourself.
Other examples of SaaS offerings are Gmail, Google Docs, Salesforce and Xero.
Tenancy¶
You AgileData environment is what we call a tenancy.
Most customers tend to have one tenancy but you can have one or more tenancies as a customer.
For example you may have a tenancy for production and development or you may decided to have separate tenancies for different business units within your organisation.
You do not need to use separate tenancies to provide separate data access across business units. AgileData coarse and fine grained security capabilities will allow you to configure the security you require within a single tenancy. But if you feel more comfortable having multiple tenancies, then that is up-to you.
Just remember that each tenancy has a separate cost based on its T-shirt sizing, and at the moment each user will need a separate login for each tenancy.