Data Flow FIWARE Orion

Question

I have three simple question for my better understading of the FIWARE ecotope:

1. If I do upload a photo with some data and want to use a database at my own, does data flow to the Orion Context Broker first and than to the database? Even if the database is with the same ISP, this might take longer before it arrives?
2. Is there some way confirming the proper upload?
3. And in case of discontinuied orion, may I use this data at all?

Many thanks

Answer 1

1) If I do upload a photo with some data and want to use a database at my own, does data flow to the orion context broker first?

As the name suggests, the Orion Context Broker is a component used to maintain context - eg the current value of sensors - a digital representation of the state of the world as it is right now (or rather when it was last measured) - it is not database and is not a storage mechanism and has no memory of the previous state. It exists merely as a neutral communications mechanism so that other all other components making up a Smart solution are able to talk using a common language NGSI.

A mongo-db database is used in the backend to hold the context data and should be regularly backed-up in case of disaster recovery.

2) Is there some way confirming the proper upload?

Context is limited to readings, JSON objects, key-value pairs and so on. If you need to upload digital images you wouldn't use a context broker directly - your own component would upload an image to storage (like S3 for example) and pass the URL of the location to the context broker.

An additional data persistence component such as Cygnus or Draco would be able to place the historical values of that attribute into the database of your choice (eg HDFS)

As you can see there is no need of confirmation of upload since a raw image is not context data per-se

3) And in case of discontinued orion, may I use this data at all?

The Orion-Context broker is a free open source component - all the source code available on GitHub under the APGL license. FIWARE does not offer a commercial hosting or data storage environment. Your data would be held with which ever cloud service provider you were signed up with.