Preparing for Data-driven Infrastructure

Managing data is a strategic problem for institutional managers, as well as a technical problem for IT staff. As such, this report is neither a playbook nor a shopping list. This report provides an overview of some concepts and approaches as well as tools, and can be used to help organisational planning.  Specifically, this report: • describes data-centric architectures; • gives some examples of how data are already shared between organisations and discusses this from a data-ce [...]

All organisations are required to share data in some ways – whether internally, to a defined community, or openly. Data sharing is often held to be a benefit in its own right – in particular within the education and research communities – but there are strong and increasing drivers to share more, and more openly. Institutions have adopted a wide variety of internal approaches to creating data architectures internally. In many cases, they are developed ad hoc, data flows are created betw [...]

Managing corporate data is a task that has occupied and frustrated organisations of all sizes. They understand that they have access to data of critical importance for business operations and strategic planning, but are unable to exploit these data. The CEO of HP, Lew Platt, famously once said: “If only HP knew what HP knows, we would be three times more productive.” Different organisations have dealt with the need to manage their data in different ways, using different institutional and [...]

Data sharing All organisations are required to share data in some ways – whether internally, to a defined community, or openly. Data sharing is often held to be a benefit in its own right – in particular within the education and research communities – but there are strong and increasing drivers to share more, and more openly (DeSantis, 2012). It is important to recognise, however, that the costs and benefits of data sharing are not aligned: the costs are borne by the data source, while th [...]

APIs An API is an Application Programming Interface: the channel through which software components communicate with each other. For the purposes of this report, APIs are the links which hold together the systems within a pragmatic data-centric architecture. A forthcoming JISC report will cover the use of APIs in detail; this section will introduce some concepts, and outline some of the most important factors to consider.[1] APIs have been described in many ways,  APIs: A Strategy Guide c [...]

Data-centric design Developing systems of systems with loose coupling through appropriate APIs is now firmly established as a design paradigm for Internet services, and is becoming well established for internal services. This recognition, that the ability to share data with other systems is not an add-on, but is a key requirement of every system, is the fundamental step required to move toward a pragmatic data-centric architecture. Aligned with the recent professionalisation of IT management wi [...]

Term Description API An API is an Application Programming Interface – the channel through which software components communicate with each other. AWS Amazon Web Services BI Business Intelligence Compute clusters Powerful computer systems designed primarily for conducting complex calculations in parallel. DDS Data Distribution Service for Real-Time Systems ERP Enterprise Resourcing and Planning ESB Enterprise Service Bus FE Furth [...]

JISC Observatory aims to provide considered and prioritised information, analysis, and recommendations regarding emerging innovations (technologies, standards) and their usage relevant to Higher Education and Further Education. This work aims to ensure that sector institutions can plan interventions in enough time to sustain world-class education and research. Observatory process JISC Observatory evidence-gathering process draws out tacit knowledge and informed experience of those working at t [...]

Berners-Lee, T., 2006 [updated 2009]. Design Issues in Linked Data. [Online] Available at: http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html [Accessed 12 May 2012]. Bilbie, A., 2012. Email to data-ac-uk@jiscmail.ac.uk email list. [Online] Available at: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind1204&L=DATA-AC-UK&F=&S=&P=5151 [Accessed 12 May 2012]. Clarke, G., 2010. SciDB: Relational daddy answers Google, Hadoop, NoSQL (Interview with Michael Stonebraker). [Online] Avai [...]