Streaming analytics and Cloud of Things
Devices and sensors can be connected to Cloud of Things. See Interfacing devices in the Concepts guide and Device integration using MQTT in the Device Integration guide.
Sensors result in Measurement or Event objects in Cloud of Things, and devices can receive Operation objects created within the Cloud of Things platform. All of these objects (Measurement, Event, Operation) will be associated with a single device in the Cloud of Things platform. A device may have multiple types of measurement associated with it, and the types of measurements each device supports may be the same as other devices or different to other devices. Once devices are connected to Cloud of Things, information about these devices is stored in the Cloud of Things inventory. These are visible in the Device management application, which can also be used to view Measurement, Event or Operation objects associated with that device. See Device management in the User guide for more information.
Using the Advanced Rules application, you can add your own logic to your IoT solution for immediate processing of incoming data from devices or other data sources. These user-defined operations can, for example, alert applications of new incoming data, create new operations based on the received data (such as sending an alarm when a threshold for a sensor is exceeded), or trigger operations on devices.
Typical real-time analytics use cases include:
- Remote control: Turn a device off if its temperature rises over 40 degrees.
- Validation: Discard negative meter readings or meter readings that are lower than the previous.
- Derived data: Calculate the volume of sales transactions per vending machine per day.
- Aggregation: Sum up the sales of vending machines for a customer per day.
- Notifications: Send me an email if there is a power outage in one of my machines.
- Compression: Store location updates of all cars only once every five minutes (but still send real-time data for the car that I am looking at to the user interface).
The Cloud of Things platform includes an Apama correlator component, which is managed by the Cloud of Things platform (this is not manually started or stopped) and is preconfigured to communicate to Cloud of Things. This correlator hosts the Analytics Builder runtime, and also executes any operation logic added using EPL apps. The operation logic is based on Apama’s Event Processing Language (Apama EPL).
Info
This documentation assumes basic familiarity with Apama application development. Refer to the Apama documentation for further details.
The Advanced Rules application can be used with both Cloud of Things Core (cloud) and Cloud of Things Edge (local installation).
Home screen
You access the Advanced Rules application using the application switcher.
The home screen of the Advanced Rules application lets you navigate to the different pages of the application. These are Analytics Builder and EPL Apps. You can access these pages using the corresponding Open button on the home screen or by using the navigator on the left.
If you need more space for a page, you can hide the navigator. Click the small arrow at the very left of the top bar to toggle the display of the navigator.
The home screen also provides information on smart rules. You create and maintain them with the Cockpit application. See Cockpit > Smart rules in the User guide for detailed information.
The home screen and navigator only show entries for the items that you are allowed to use, depending on the version of the Apama-ctrl microservice to which your tenant is subscribed. See also Microservice runtime and applications and Customizing the home screen of the Advanced Rules application.
Analytics Builder
The Analytics Builder page of the Advanced Rules application allows you to build analytic models that transform or analyze streaming data in order to generate new data or output events. The models are capable of processing data in real time.
The models interact with the devices and sensor measurements. Models can receive Measurement and Event objects from devices, which provide the inputs to calculations or pattern detection performed within a model. Models can create new Measurement objects which can represent derived values from sensors (for example, an average temperature) or the measurements can be used as an input to other analytic models (see Connections between models). Models can create new Operation objects which are sent to devices to control the devices (for example, to sound an alarm bell, display a message on a screen, or switch a device off). The models are also stored in the Cloud of Things inventory, but can be imported or exported via the model manager.
You build the models in a graphical environment by combining pre-built blocks into models. The blocks in a model package up small bits of logic, and have a number of inputs, outputs and parameters. Each block implements a specific piece of functionality, such as receiving data from a sensor, performing a calculation, detecting a condition, or generating an output signal. You define the configuration of the blocks and connect the blocks using wires. You can edit the models, simulate deployment with historic data, or run them against live systems. See Analytics Builder for detailed information.
It is also possible to build custom blocks if none of the blocks delivered with Analytics Builder implement the logic required; see Creating your own blocks.
You can customize several aspects of Analytics Builder by setting various tenant options. See Configuration for detailed information.
EPL Apps
The EPL Apps page of the Advanced Rules application allows you to write business logic in Apama’s Event Processing Language (Apama EPL) which gives more power and flexibility in a text-based programming language. This is an alternative if more complex logic is required or the logic does not fit into the pattern of an analytic model.
You can develop EPL apps (that is, single *.mon files) directly within Cloud of Things, written in Apama EPL. You can also import existing *.mon files as EPL apps into Cloud of Things. When you activate an EPL app from the Advanced Rules application, you deploy it to Cloud of Things. See EPL Apps for detailed information, including examples.
A quick way to get started is to explore the code of the EPL samples that can be accessed from the EPL editor. See Developing apps with the Advanced Rules application for information on how to create an EPL app and access the samples. For a start, use one of the simpler samples with temperature measurements, such as “Create an alarm if a measurement exceeds a threshold value”. You can immediately see results using this sample. Add your own EPL code to the sample and try out your changes.
You use the Apama API for interacting with Cloud of Things. For detailed information, see the com.apama.cumulocity package in the API Reference for EPL (ApamaDoc), which is part of the Apama documentation.
Prerequisites
Browsers
The Advanced Rules application supports the same browsers as Cloud of Things, with the following exception: browsers on smartphones and tablets are not supported.
Permissions
To use Analytics Builder, you must at least have the following permissions:
| Permission type | Permission level |
|---|---|
| CEP management | ADMIN |
| Option management | READ |
| Inventory | READ |
This is typically achieved by using a global role which has those permissions, and where the role has access to the Analytics Builder application. See Administration > Managing permissions in the User guide for details.
To use EPL Apps, you only need the following permission:
| Permission type | Permission level |
|---|---|
| CEP management | ADMIN |
Microservice runtime and applications
Analytic models, EPL apps and smart rules are executed in an Apama-ctrl microservice. This has a per-tenant isolation scope, that is, each subscribed tenant has its own instance of an Apama container with dedicated resources (that is, memory and CPU usage). The container is isolated from other tenants, hence high CPU load or memory issues on other containers are tracked and resourced independently.
| To do this | you need the following |
|---|---|
| Build analytic models | Apama-ctrl microservice and Advanced Rules application |
| Develop EPL apps | Apama-ctrl microservice and Advanced Rules application |
| Use smart rules | Apama-ctrl microservice and Smartrule microservice (included in Cloud of Things’s Standard tenant) |
See also the following sections in the User guide:
- Administration > Managing applications > Subscribed applications
- Administration > Managing and monitoring microservices > Subscribed microservices
- Cockpit > Smart rules
If your tenant is subscribed to the Apama-ctrl-starter microservice, then the following applies:
- Limited number of at most 3 active analytic models. Custom blocks written with the Analytics Builder Block SDK cannot be used.
- The EPL Apps page is not available in the Advanced Rules application.
- Unlimited number of smart rules.
If your tenant is subscribed to the Apama-ctrl-mt-4c-16g microservice, then the following applies:
- Multi-tenant support.
- EPL apps are only enabled on the Management tenant and Enterprise tenant that owns the microservice, but disabled on the subtenants.
- The Analytics Builder page is currently not available in the Advanced Rules application.
- Unlimited number of smart rules.
If your tenant is subscribed to the Apama-ctrl-smartrules or Apama-ctrl-smartrulesmt microservice, the Analytics Builder and EPL Apps pages are not available in the Advanced Rules application.
Contact product support to discuss adding more capabilities.
Language settings
The language in which the user interface of the Advanced Rules application is shown depends on your user settings in Cloud of Things. See Getting Started > User options and settings in the User guide for more information.
If Cloud of Things or the browser is set to a language that is currently not supported by the Advanced Rules application, the user interface is shown with the default language, which is English.