Platform Structure
Each Iotellect deployment comprises one or more servers that host components of single or multiple solutions/products/services developed atop of the platform. A server is a Java application that runs on a Java-enabled OS on a physical server, virtual machine, or an industrial PC. Each server may be a part of an independent failover cluster that ensures its high availability.
The core of each Iotellect server is unified data model that is represented by a hierarchical context tree. Each context represents a certain device, data source or system resource as a set of entities: variables, functions, events and actions.
Servers are running various plugins responsible for application deployment, data acquisition, storage, processing, and visualisation, etc. Depending on system design, each server can use either many different plugins ("solid" architecture) or just a few plugins ("micro services" architecture).
In a large installation different platform servers can have different roles. Servers are tied together using distributed architecture and can be also separated into several tiers (e.g. "edge" and "cloud"). Distributed architecture allows servers to exchange parts of their unified data models, effectively enabling distributed application design.
Iotellect servers interact with devices by controlling and configuring them, as well as collecting data streams and events from them. Device-specific data is always normalized, i.e. converted to format of Iotellect unified data model. Normalization is performed either on device side by a software/hardware agent or on server side by a software device driver.
Drivers are also used to access structured data sources, such as third party systems. Platform bundles include many drivers for standard communication protocols, such as HTTP, MQTT, SNMP or Modbus.
Each server is backed by various storage facilities that keep configuration, events, and binary data in NoSQL, relational, or other databases.
In Iotellect, there is no formal difference between development, testing and production servers. Any server may act as an integrated development environment and offer low code development, deployment, debugging, and devops tools. Their practical availability is restricted by platform's security and access control features.
The platform provides two independent user interface design systems: a browser-based web UI builder and a cross-platform desktop application constructor.
Both user interfaces can be used for platform administration and configuration as well. They also include various visual editors for low code development of drivers, workflows, dashboards, and other application components.
Monolith vs Microservices
Iotellect has Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). It's generally designed for supporting microservice-based application development.
Iotellect Server has very compact core and, in microservices design approach, each server is running just a single "primary" plugin that offers a standalone service within the main app. Multiple servers are connected together through distributed architecture or classic methods such as HTTP/REST or message brocker.
However, small and medium scale solutions may leverage Iotellect Server's ability to run multiple plugins. Having all plugins deployed on a single server follows monolith app design. Despite its obvious downsides, this approach allows to build apps faster and shorten their time-to-market.
Solution architecture may certainly imply using "mixed" architecture with some servers sharing certain modules while others are running just one specific service. Generally, the higher is your solution's load the larger is the number of microservices you should consider during the architectural design stage.
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