Environments, Resources and Flows

Environments, Resources and Flows are keystones in the Factory’s architecture, which need to be understood to to use them to best advantage.

Environments

An Environment is a container of resources which has specific options and sources. By default, the first environment automatically created takes its name from the username of your machine (e.g. Env_username).

It is also possible to create other Environments within the default one, or or you can create new environments which are in no way linked.

Working with Environments helps not only dividing flows and having an organized Explorer, but helps all the company working in an effective way.

Environments are very useful when different groups of professionals work on the software, as the information about all the variables, permissions, and so on can be set at environment level, meaning that all the resources within the environment, like flows, inherit them. Changes to the resources can be done at flow level, but only by users who have the required permissions to do so. This feature has a positive impact on:

• Security, as sensitive data can be set and viewed by authorized users through an advanced permission management system. For example, if you need a SharePoint connection, where datasets from different departments are stored, but the passwords are owned only by the admins, filesystem connections can be configured and shared, without sharing the underlying password, to allow the users in charge of building flows to import its files. This avoids security issues due to password sharing, and the need for multiple users to remember passwords.

• Scalability: as the number of departments who use Factory within an enterprise increases, the creation of environments makes it easier for users to exchange information and use the same connection information.

• Change management: as only a restricted number of people have the permissions to make modifications, there is a far stricter and more granular control over change management.

Resources

A resource is an object, saved within an environment, which can be used in any flow or environment built within the environment.

You can create a network of permissions on specific resources through the permission panel, such as allowing or forbidding other users to view, modify, and delete the resource.

The following resources are provided in Rulex Factory:

• Remote Filesystem connection

• Database connection

• Macro

• Repository connection for versioning

• Vault

All the resources can be imported and exported within the environment.

Flows

Flows are the primary resources of Factory, where data solutions can be built by logically connecting tasks.

A flow contains the sources and options inherited from the Environment they belong to.

The inherited sources and options can be modified within the flow: any modifications made will be applied to the flow only, and not the parent environment.

What can you do in a Flow?

• import data in different formats, from different sources, and blend it into a single dataset.

• transform, clean, and enrich datasets in powerful pre-processing tasks.

• apply classification, regression, cluster, association, and optimization algorithms to your data to find hidden insight and solve business problems.

• export your results to the location and in the format you prefer.