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Application Integration::Population application pattern::Runtime patterns

Population application pattern::Runtime pattern

Population::Runtime pattern Data Server Services Data Server Services Population
Design Last Updated: 10-20-2004
(Click a node to get a detailed explanation.)

A Data Server/Services node is a generic data storage node that provides managed, persistent storage of any type of data and a means to directly access and manipulate that data. The data may be stored in files and accessed through file I/O routines or may be stored in a database with more structured and managed access methods. Although omitted for simplicity of representation, an Application Server/Services node can be substituted for the Data Server/Services node where access to the data is provided through an application API rather than directly to the database management system.

The Population node is a specialized processing node designed and optimized for reading and writing data from/to data stores and transforming the data, often in sophisticated ways, as it passes through. Some Population nodes are further specialized for handling the data under different circumstances, such as efficient throughput of large batches of records that require extensive transformation, or for fast throughput of individual records in near real-time.

Multiple data sources may be involved in the base Population runtime pattern process; and reasonably sophisticated filtering, cleansing, and transformations may occur within the Population function. The main point is that this process can occur in a single step.

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Data Server/Services

A Data Server/Services node is a generic data storage node that provides managed, persistent storage of any type of data and a means to directly access and manipulate that data. The data may be stored in files and accessed through file I/O routines or may be stored in a database with more structured and managed access methods.

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Population

A population node is a specialized application or data server that is optimized for record-oriented processing where the records must be gathered from one or more source data sets, processed singly and multiply and finally applied to one or more target data sets. A population node typically operates in an "off-line" mode to prepare data in advance of its business usage and based on rules that have been previously defined through a separate user interface module and stored in a metadata repository.

A population server may be further specialized for one or two of its inherent sub-functions--gather, process or apply (also known as extract, transform and load respectively). Such specialization may be for reasons of performance or physical placement.