We have a requirement to track the physical assets like printer,laptops (part of inventory list) for all users in our organization in real time. In recent times,there are cases of missing laptops and theft and since we don't have a database to track, we don't have information on who is owning which laptop. We would like to have a proper governance in place to achieve this. Can we use an Azure IOT workflow in conjunction with Azure cognitive analytics capabilities/Azure eventHub to get some real time data and any reference architectures which can guide to implement this complete project.
-Hema
Yes, you can use Azure IoT for tracking and managing Asset inventory.
As Deep mentioned on above comment, you can use Device management with IoT Central.
Azure IoT Central is a solution development platform that simplifies IoT device connectivity, configuration, and management. The platform significantly reduces the burden and costs of IoT device management, operations, and related developments. Customers and partners can build an end-to-end enterprise solutions to achieve a digital feedback loop in inventory management.
The benefits of smart inventory management include:
Reducing the risk of items being out of stock and ensuring the desired customer service level.
In-depth analysis and insights into inventory accuracy in near real time.
Tools to help decide on the right amount of inventory to hold to meet customer orders.
This application template focuses on device connectivity, and the configuration and management of RFID and Bluetooth low energy (BLE) reader devices.
Please see Deploy and walk through the smart inventory management application template for more details.
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I am trying to do something new, something I have never done before. I am looking for advice or point me into right direction how to choose technology. I am trying to build race simulation app that will have thousands of iot devices streaming data into central platform. While I understand that I can use some sort of IOT hub with cloud providers, but what technology do I choose for storing data?
Example is online indoor biking app. There are apps where you can connect your indoor bike online and have simulated race. For my project I am trying to build something similar. Do I use NO SQL db in this scenario? What technology will allow better scale of application like this since it could be millions of devices around the world in "simulated" race. I am not worried about front-end and things like that, but backend, IOT hub, storing data, presenting-real time?
At this point it is important to understand what kind of data your IoT devices will stream, and at what kind of a rate. It will have significant impact on your question.
That it is if it's just location information and some other small data sent lets say once a second, then if you're talking about tens of thousands of devices - this is not a big load of information, and any standard database, like MySQL will be able to deal with it. You will of course need a multi-threaded server(s) capable of handling many requests in parallel.
If your IoT devices will stream HD video, then you're looking at a completely different solution, with a much stronger server, capable of handling allot of streams in parallel, with significant bandwidth requirements from your hosting company, as well as storage space for all the videos. In this case you will store the streams as files (if you'll need them later on), and you won't need any special database either.
In any case, once you'll reach millions of users, you'll be able to scale most modern databases and servers, like MySQL replication capability. For example, take a look how Wikipedia is relying on MySQL: wikipedia - MySQL https://www.mysql.com/why-mysql/case-studies/mysql-cs-wikipedia.html
So I wouldn't be worried regarding the database on this stage, but make sure that the design of my system is in accordance to the the type of data and rate it is streamed.
Hope this gives you a pointer.
I understand bitcoin uses blockchain technology to maintain a decentralised ledger of all transactions. I have also read many posts eluding to future applications of blockchain technology, none of which have been very clear to me.
Is blockchain technology simply a decentralised database with consensus validation of the data? If this was the case surely the db would grow to be too large to be effectively decentralised?
To help me understand, can anyone point me to a clear example of a non-bitcoin blockchain application?
Yes, its true that the blockchain database would grow overtime which is what is called "blockchain bloat". Currently the blockchain growth of Bitcoin is roughly less than 100mb a day. Today (2016) the bitcoin blockchain takes up about 60-100GB of space which took about 6 years to accumulate. It is indeed growing faster, but also limited by the blocksize cap of 1MB per block (every 10 minutes). Some proposed solutions have been:
SPV nodes: This is how your phone doesn't need to download the entire blockchain, but retrieve its data from SPV nodes that have the entire blockchain.
Lightning network - This is how Bitcoin can overcome the 1MB memory cap.
Those are just some of the solutions for bitcoin that I know of, as for altcoin related solutions. NXT/Ardor has implemented the solution of pruned data, because NXT/Ardor gives the ability to upload arbitrary data and messages onto its blockchain, the bloat is much more apparent in this scenario. The NXT/Ardor blockchain has the ability to delete previous data every 2 weeks and only keep the hash of its data on the blockchain which only takes a few KB. They also have the ability to retain all of the blockchain data with the pruning turned off which would mark a node as an Archival Node and other nodes can replicate this node and become an Archival node.
From my understanding NXT/Ardor has been one of the few blockchains that has production ready decentralized data storage system, marketplace, stock exchange, and messaging system built into its blockchain.
Blockchain is not just a decentralised database, but it is much more than that. While the original Bitcoin blockchain allowed only value to be transferred, along with limited data with every transaction, several new blockchains have been developed in the past 2-3 years, which have much more advanced native scripting and programming capabilities.
Apart from the Bitcoin blockchain, I would say that there a few other major blockchains like Ethereum, Ripple, R3's Corda, Hyperledger. Although Ethereum has a crypto-currency called Ether, it is actually a Turing complete EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine). Using Ethereum, you can create Smart Contracts that would themselves run in a decentralised manner. As a developer, it opens up completely new avenues for you and changes your perspective of writing programs. While Ripple is mainly geared towards payments, Corda and Hyperledger are built with a view of being private/permissioned blockchains, to solve the issues such as scalability, privacy, and identity. The target markets for Hyperledger and Corda are mostly banks and other Financial Institutions.
As for the non-bitcoin application of blockchain, you can certainly look at some companies like Consensys (multiple different use cases on blockchain), Digix Global (gold tokens on the blockchain), Everledger (tracking of diamonds on the blockchain), Otonomos (Company registration on the blockchain), OT Docs (Trade Finance and document versioning on the blockchain) amongst others.
Blockchain is:
Name for a data structure,
Name for an algorithm,
Name for a suite of Technologies,
An umbrella term for purely distributed peer-to-peer systems with a common application area,
A peer-to-peer-based operating system with its own unique rule set that utilizes hashing to provide unique data transactions with a distributed ledger
Blockchain is much more than a "database". Yes the blocks on the chain stores data but it is more like a service. There are many applications of blockchain. Read about them: here. If you want to see the code of a blockchain application, try this one: here.
Blockchain is combination of p2p network, decentralised database and asymmetric cryptography
P2P network means you can transfer data between two deferent network nodes without any middleman, decentralised db means every nodes of network has one replica of network db and asymmetric cryptography means you can use digital signature to validate the authenticity and integrity of a messages
I would like to create an app where the user can add and view data. Either adding at a desktop/tablet or phone and reading from either source. I would like the data store to be synced between any of the user's devices.
I'm starting to play with the Trial of Azure, and it looks promising. Probably a solid way to sync data through to cloud between users' devices. Other than syncing between a users devices, I have no need for cloud services currently.
I've seen some apps that do a 'Backup/Restore' model with the user's SkyDrive account. But this seems to be a manual process. I'd like to see it done seamlessly.
I've looked into Sync services, but that would be more like a hub/spoke solution. Again, I don't need a central database.
What are some options? At this point, I would be fine using just Windows 8 patterns/practices.
Because they are separate devices, you will need to have some service layer to do the store/forward for you. With that you have two basic choices, use the end user's own storage (aka SkyDrive) or use your own storage (aka Windows Azure).
SkyDrive is fully supported through the Live SDKs and provides a secure way to allow a user to share store their data, and synchronize it across multiple devices. You get security, and there is no cost for the server side storage on your part. The user owns their storage, not you. The limitation is that you may have issues sharing that same data across other devices or users where SkyDrive (or whatever file sync service you use) is not available.
With a service layer, like Azure, you have a lot more flexibility, but you also will be responsible for maintaining (and paying for) that server side storage / services. Have you looked at "Windows Azure Mobile Services". With your Azure account you get 10 free Azure Mobile Services. You will pay for the SQL data storage on the backend, and that cost will depend on the amount of data you store on the server side. You also need to make sure to architect your application in a way to protect an individual users' data, but it is actually pretty easy to do, well documented, and gives you a lot of options.
Lastly, you may consider what type of data you want to share. SkyDrive is great for "Files". Pics, Songs, Videos, etc. Windows Azure Mobile Services (WAMS) is great for "Data".
Neither model is right or wrong. It just depends on your goals.
Hope that helps you go through the thought process
I'm curious how banks handle recurring tasks of their users. And if they have thousands of those tasks, for example paypal recurring payments, how does paypal handle them? What software they use? I dont think they use cron\quartz for such tasks.
What do they do if system goes down and unable to process user tasks?
Is there any solution like mysql has with event scheduler? Have anyone tried RabbitMQ to process various events?
CICS, COBOL and over-night batch jobs still abound.
Banks and telecom sector have very power full system and they are just develop for this specific purpose we just need to integrate them.
When i was working in a telecom company they have lot of servers and all of them have 32+GB of ram etc.
For banks they also have very power full system, When ever their system crash automatically other server start working. Banks have central repository where they save their data due to the central system they didn't get data consistency issue.
In an electric company where I was hired temporarily, we have to implement an upgrade of the billing and payments system ( the current system is a dbaseIII system). The company's programmer and I have decided to use VB.Net and MySQL.
The company served several towns and have billing and payments centers in selected towns. Every billing period, the meter readers would read the readings for every electric meters and then write the readings in the sheet. Every 5 pm, an employee from the centers would collect the sheets and then travel to the main center where the readings are encoded.
The billings are printed in the main center, and then distributed to the branches.
During discussions with General Manager and heads of the company, the two of us are tasked to take advantage of the internet because those towns where the centers are located have internet connectivity, and for those none, we can use the mobile internet.
The new system will allow users to enter the readings, and then send the data to the main server in the main branch. They also have the ability to download and print the billings.
Our problem now is what type of system we have to implement. Should it be web based or a desktop application that will connect to our database server through vpn.
If this is a fixed price project, and the client will accept either web or desktop, go with desktop over VPN. You'll save A TON of time, and have something that is more responsive (from a user perspective).
However, if you think the client will eventually need to use the product on mobile devices or the web, you're shooting yourself in the foot by going winforms.
Having had some experience with using a thick client through VPN, I'd say go with some kind of web app.
If done wrong, a thick client can become really painful to use through a VPN because of data churning. A web app concentrates all of that on the server, which makes it much better from that point of view.
Other benefits:
no deployment hassle
no direct access to the database from the user machine.
Evidently it also depends on your skills, and on how much time/budget you have...
I do not know the situation of the client... but what about giving them the best of both worlds? Considering it sounds like you will be programming on a windows based system, and have deployment access to windows server based hardware, why not either build a Silverlight application, or build a WPF application that's hosted in an IE window? That could give you the best of both worlds?
I think that the answer depends on the type / frequency of database queries you need to make. Querying a DB from a thick client through VPN can be SLOOOOOWWWWWW. In a web app, the application logic runs close to the DB, maybe even on the same machine, so DB queries are fast. The downside is that UI can be slower. But it is probably easier to design a responsive web-based UI than make VPN fast.
what instrument your bill collector will use ?
1>Laptop with Mobile InetConnection
2>Or specialized hand held tool that read the bill and send to Service center ?
1> If it is Laptop then you can create website where only authorized person can loggin and then he can insert a database. You can use HTTPs for better security.