Forward-thinking businesses use data-based insights in today’s fast-paced global market to identify and seize major business opportunities, create and market ground-breaking goods and services, and keep a competitive edge. As a result, these businesses are gathering more data overall as well as new sorts of data, like sensor data.
However, businesses need a data ingestion framework that can assist them in getting data to the appropriate systems and applications quickly and efficiently, if they are to swiftly process and deliver relevant, accurate, and up-to-date data for analysis and insight.
You can increase the accessibility of multi-sourced data across your organization, take advantage of new analytics tools like big data analytics platforms, and extract more value and fresh insight from your data assets if you have a flexible, dependable data ingestion framework and a high-performance data replication tool.
What is Data Ingestion Framework?
The process for transferring data from numerous sources to a storage repository or data processing tool is known as a data ingestion framework. Data ingestion can be done in one of two ways: batch or streaming. There are many different models and architectural approaches that can be used to construct a framework. Your data source(s) and how rapidly you require the data for analysis will determine how you ingest data.
1. Batch Data Ingestion
Before the emergence of big data, all data was ingested using a batch data ingestion framework, and this approach is still widely employed today. Batch processing groups data and periodically transfers it in batches into a data platform or application. Even though batch processing typically costs less – since it requires fewer computing resources – it might be slow if you have a lot of data to analyze. It is better to ingest data utilizing a streaming procedure if real-time or almost real-time access to the data is required.
2. Steaming Data Ingestion
As soon as new data is created (or identified by the system), streaming data ingestion immediately transfers it into a data platform. It’s perfect for business intelligence applications that need current information to guarantee the highest accuracy and quickest problem-solving.
In some cases, the distinction between batch processing and streaming is getting hazy. Some software applications that advertise streaming really use batch processing. The procedure is extraordinarily quick since they ingest data at little intervals and work with small data groupings. Sometimes this strategy is referred to as micro-batching.
Data Ingestion Roadmap
Extract and load are normally simple for businesses, but the transformation is often a challenge. As a result, if no data has been ingested for processing, an analytical engine may lie idle. Here are some recommendations for data ingesting best practices to take into account in light of this reality:
Expect Challenges and Make a Plan Accordingly
The unsavory truth about data ingestion is that gathering and cleaning the data is said to consume between 60% and 80% of the time allotted for any analytics project. We picture data scientists running algorithms, analyzing the outcomes, and then modifying their algorithms for the upcoming run – the thrilling aspect of the job.
However, in practice, data scientists actually spend the majority of their time trying to organize the data so they can start their analytical work. This portion of the task expands constantly as big data volume increases.
Many businesses start data analytics initiatives without realizing this, and when the data ingestion process takes longer than expected, they are shocked or unhappy. While the data ingestion attempt fails, other teams have created analytical engines that rely on the existence of clean imported data and are left waiting impassively.
There isn’t a magic solution that will make these problems go away. Prepare for them by anticipating them.
Automate Data Ingestion
Data ingestion could be done manually in the good old days when data was small and only existed in a few dozen tables at most. A programmer was assigned to each local data source to determine how it should be mapped into the global schema after a human developed a global schema. In their preferred scripting languages, individual programmers created mapping and cleaning procedures, then executed them as necessary.
The amount and variety of data available now make manual curation impossible. Wherever possible, you must create technologies that automate the ingestion process.
Use Artificial Intelligence
In order to automatically infer information about data being ingested and largely reduce the need for manual work, a range of technologies has been developed that use machine learning and statistical algorithms.
The following are a few processes that these systems can automate:
- Inferring the global schema from the local tables mapped to it.
- Determining which global table a local table should be ingested into.
- Finding alternative words for data normalization.
- Using fuzzy matching, finding duplicate records.
Make it Self-Service
Every week, dozens of new data sources will need to be absorbed into a midsize company. Every request must be implemented by a centralized IT group, which eventually results in bottlenecks. Making data intake self-serviceable by giving users (who want to ingest new data sources) access to simple tools for data preparation is the answer.
Govern the Data to Keep it Clean
Once you have taken the work to clean your data, you’d want to keep it clean. This entails establishing data governance with a data steward in charge of each data source’s quality.
Choosing which data should be ingested into each data source, setting the schema and cleansing procedures, and controlling the handling of soiled data are all included in this duty.
Of course, data governance encompasses more than just data quality, including data security, adherence to legal requirements like GDPR, and master data management. In order to accomplish all of these objectives, the organization’s relationship with data must change culturally. A data steward who can lead the necessary initiatives and take responsibility for the outcomes is also essential.
Advertise Your Cleansed Data
Will other users be able to quickly locate a specific data source once you have cleaned it up? Customers who want point-to-point data integration have no method of discovering data that has already been cleaned for a different customer and might be relevant. Implementing a pub-sub (publish-subscribe) model with a database containing previously cleaned data that can be searched by all of your users is a good idea for your company.
How does your Data Ingestion Framework Relate to your Data Strategy?
A framework in software development serves as a conceptual base for creating applications. In addition to tools, functions, generic structures, and classes that aid in streamlining the application development process, frameworks offer a basis for programming. In this instance, your data ingestion framework makes the process of integrating and gathering data from various data sources and data kinds simpler.
Your data processing needs and the data’s intended use will determine the data ingestion methodology you select. You have the choice of using a data ingestion technology or manually coding a tailored framework to satisfy the unique requirements of your business.
The complexity of the data, whether or not the process can be automated, how quickly it is required for analysis, the associated regulatory and compliance requirements, and the quality parameters are some considerations you must keep in mind. You can proceed to the data ingestion process flow once you’ve chosen your data ingesting approach.
How does your Data Ingestion Framework Relate to your Data Quality?
The stronger your demand for data intake observability, whether here or at any layer or place through which the data will transit, the higher your need for data quality will be. The more insight you need into the caliber of the data being absorbed, in other words.
Errors have a tendency to snowball, so “garbage in” can easily turn into “garbage everywhere.” Small improvements in the quality of this area will add up and save hours or even days of work.
If you can see the data ingestion procedure, you can more accurately:
- Aggregate the data—gather it all in one place.
- Merge—combine like datasets.
- Divide—divide, unlike datasets.
- Summarize—produce metadata to describe the dataset.
- Validate the data—verify that the data is high quality (as expected).
- (Maybe) Standardize—align schemas.
- Cleanse—remove incorrect data.
Data Ingestion Tools
Tools for data ingestion collect and send structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data between sources and destinations. These tools streamline manual, time-consuming intake procedures. A data ingestion pipeline, a sequence of processing stages, is used to move data from one place to another.
Tools for data ingestion have a variety of features and capacities. You must weigh a number of criteria and make an informed decision in order to choose the tool that best suits your requirements:
Format: What kind of data—structured, semi-structured, or unstructured—arrives?
Frequency: Is real-time or batch processing of data to be used?
Size: How much data must an ingestion tool process at once?
Privacy: Is there any private information that needs to be protected or obscured?
Additionally, there are other uses for data ingestion tools. For instance, they are able to daily import millions of records into Salesforce. Alternatively, they can make sure that several programs regularly communicate data. A business intelligence platform can receive marketing data via ingestion tools for additional analysis.
Benefits of Data Ingestion Framework
With the help of a data ingestion framework, companies may manage their data more effectively and acquire a competitive edge. Among these advantages are:
- Data is easily accessible: Companies can gather data housed across several sites and move it to a uniform environment for quick access and analysis thanks to data ingestion.
- Less complex data: A data warehouse can receive multiple forms of data that have been transformed into pre-set formats using advanced data intake pipelines and ETL tools.
- Teams save both money and time: Engineers may now devote their time to other, more important activities because data ingestion automates some of the operations that they had to perform manually in the past.
- Better decision making: Real-time data ingestion enables firms to swiftly identify issues and opportunities and make knowledgeable decisions.
- Teams improve software tools and apps: Data ingestion technology can be used by engineers to make sure that their software tools and apps transport data rapidly and offer users a better experience.
Challenges Encountered in Data Ingestion
Creating and managing data ingestion pipelines may be simpler than in the past, but there are still a number of difficulties to overcome:
- The data system is increasingly diverse: It is challenging to develop a future-proof data ingestion framework since the data ecosystem is becoming more and more diversified. Teams must deal with a rising variety of data types and sources.
- Complex legal requirements: Data teams must become knowledgeable about a variety of data privacy and protection rules, including GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC 2, to make sure they are acting legally.
- The breadth and scope of cybersecurity threats are expanding: In an effort to collect and steal sensitive data, malicious actors frequently undertake cyberattacks, which data teams must defend against.
About Artha Solutions
Data ingestion is a crucial piece of technology that enables businesses to extract and send data automatically. IT and other business teams may focus on extracting value from data and finding novel insights after developing data intake pipelines. Additionally, in today’s fiercely competitive markets, automated data input could become a critical differentiation.
Artha Solutions can give you the tools you need to succeed as your business aspires to expand and achieve a competitive advantage in real-time decision-making. To assist the data ingestion procedure, your company receives continuous data delivery from our end-to-end platform.
Our platform helps you automate and develop data pipelines rapidly while cutting down on the typical ramp-up period needed to integrate new technologies. Make a call to us right away to begin creating intelligent data pipelines for data ingestion.
