Product Features

Applications

6min

The Applications module provides access to two types of application repositories:

  • Public marketplaces: Publicly available, such as Docker Registry.
  • Private marketplace: Repositories of your own Docker container-based applications with privately controlled access. They are often created and maintained on a private network with no internet access.

You can deploy and launch applications on demand from any of the available marketplace catalogs.

See Applications Guides to review how to leverage different applications in Manufacturing Connect Edge.

Important: Internet connectivity is required to deploy the default marketplace and to install applications. Once an instance is created, internet access is no longer required to create additional instances of the same application.

Public Marketplaces

Manufacturing Connect Edge and partner vendors populate the Default Public Marketplace. This repository is available to every Manufacturing Connect Edge system by default. You can add other public marketplaces to your edge device as required.

Here is a sampling of the available applications in the default public marketplace:

  • Elasticsearch: A distributed RESTful search and analytics engine.
  • Kx: A time-series database that processes (in memory) real-time, streaming, and historical data.
  • Minio: An open-source cloud object-storage server.
  • MongoDB: A free and open-source cross-platform document-oriented database.
  • SQL Server: A relational database management system that uses SQL.
  • MySQL: An open-source relational database management system that uses SQL.
  • PipelineDB: An open-source relational database that continuously streams SQL queries.
  • PostgreSQL: An object relational database management system (ORDBMS) with an emphasis on extensibility and standard compliance.
  • Python: The Python programming language.

Private Marketplaces

You can add multiple private marketplaces to your edge device. An organization, such as an OEM or systems integrator, can provide clients with a marketplace by leveraging custom applications that may have already been developed or need to be developed in the future. In addition, third-party applications may also be run in this marketplace. All applications in a private marketplace run within Docker containers.

Marketplace and Application Security

Applications can be integrated into Manufacturing Connect Edge to enable further edge processing of collected data. The data can then be analyzed and incorporated into existing business systems.

  • Applications run locally at the edge device
  • Applications run completely isolated in containers (Docker) to enforce security and support multi-tenancy
Marketplace and Application Security Architecture
Marketplace and Application Security Architecture


Data Normalization and Application Integration

Once data is collected and sent to the Manufacturing Connect Edge platform from many different device driver structures, it is normalized into one standard format. The data is then made available to Manufacturing Connect Edge applications or third-party enterprise applications. Manufacturing Connect Edge applications cover a variety of functions, such as Database, Machine Learning, Analytics, Triggers and Alerts, and Dashboard Builder. Enterprise applications can include Databases, Analytics and ML (Machine Learning), Big Data Platforms, ERPs (Enterprise Resource Planning), CRMs (Customer Relationship Management), and BI (Business Intelligence) tools.

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