IBM® InfoSphere® Data Explorer is software that provides federated discovery, navigation, and search over a
broad range of data sources and types, both inside and outside your enterprise, to help users of all kinds find
and share information more easily and to help organizations launch big data initiatives more quickly. In addition to
the core indexing, discovery, navigation and search engine the software includes a framework for developing
information-rich applications that deliver a comprehensive, contextually-relevant view of any topic for business
users, data scientists and a variety of targeted business functions.
In the big data context, the latest generation of Data Explorer Engine is most commonly used to develop data
exploration and information navigation applications that enable you to explore vast quantities of your enterprise
data, regardless of where it is stored, providing fast time to value. Its navigation and exploration capability
makes it easy to use Data Explorer Engine as a stepping stone for and core component of enterprise big data
projects.
Data Explorer architecture
Data Explorer Engine provides a flexible, modular architecture that enables it to interact with the widest
possible number of networked data repositories and with other network-accessible data sources such as
search engines. This architecture simplifies creating single information navigation applications that can
simultaneously explore content stored in a variety of formats and locations. This includes formats that are
unique to specific applications and their associated data repositories, and the combination of different data
formats that are found in networked repositories where heterogeneous content is to be expected, such as file
systems or content management systems.
Exploring data repositories through Data Explorer Engine leverages the same basic capability that is used to
search them, which is an index of the contents of all of the documents in that repository. Data Explorer
Engine creates an index of the documents from a single data repository by:
Retrieving all of the data from that repository.
Converting retrieved data into a common format that is suitable for subsequent processing, and augmenting the
retrieved data with relevant meta-information.
Creating an index of that data.
The figure below shows the functional components of Data Explorer Engine, the interaction between them
and external data repositories (identified as DATA in the figure), and their use in a typical information navigation or
search application.
Data Explorer Engine administration tool
The Data Explorer Engine administration tool is a graphical, browser-based tool that is used to configure, manage,
and debug the data exploration and information navigation applications that you create with Data Explorer Engine.
This tool provides a graphical interface that enables you to configure the Data Explorer Engine software without
having to modify the XML configuration information that Data Explorer Engine uses internally, and also provides a
convenient interface for viewing the online documentation that is provided for Data Explorer Engine and the
administration tool.
Application Builder architecture
Data Explorer Application Builder is a framework for developing 360-degree information applications that extend
the capabilities of Data Explorer Engine by enabling users to quickly locate and use information that is specific
to their role, interests, and capabilities within an organization. Application Builder adds a data relationship
definition layer that supports logical data items known as “entities” which are associated with specific data sources
or user data. Entity definitions make it easy to specify relationships between data in different repositories by
identifying related or equivalent data fields in each repository - these are conceptually analogous to the key fields
used in traditional applications such as databases.
The figure below provides a high-level view of how Application Builder leverages Data Explorer Engine, centralized
enterprise services such as Active Directory or LDAP, and its own relationship mapping and definition capabilities
to provide authenticated users with up-to-date, role-relevant information that respects existing authorization and
data permissions.
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