DATA CONSTRAINTS FOR POLYGLOT DATA TIERS

摘要

A Data Constraint Engine (100) for enforcing data constraints in a polyglot data tier (20) having a plurality of database-specific data stores (21, 22, 23) of various types such as an RDBMS (21), a Triplestore (22), and a MongoDB (23). The Data Constraint Engine uses the concept of a unified data model based on “records” in order to allow data constraints to be defined (using so-called “record shapes”) in a store-agnostic way. The Data Constraint Engine includes APIs (130) for processing incoming requests from remote clients (30) relating to data in the polyglot data tier, for example a request to create or update data in a data store. The APIs extract, from such a request, a record corresponding to the data specified in the request and a data source identifier identifying the data store holding the specified data. Then, on the basis of the record extracted by the interface, an appropriate record shape is extracted from a shapes catalogue (110), the record shape determining the structure of the record. Validators (120) each validate the record against the record shape according to various criteria such as format, data type, cardinality and slot count. If the record is validated, a record dispatcher (140) directs the specified data to the appropriate data store using the data source identifier. Data read from a data store can be validated in the same way.

主权项

1. A method of enforcing data constraints in a polyglot data tier having a plurality of heterogeneous data stores, comprising steps of:
considering data in the data stores as records which serialise the data irrespective of how and where the data is stored; extracting a record to be validated; finding a record shape corresponding to the record, each record shape expressed in an extensible vocabulary and determining the structure of a record; and applying data constraints to the record by checking the record against each of a plurality of criteria defined in the corresponding record shape; and determining the record as valid if all the criteria are fulfilled.