1. Basic Concepts (Revision #0)

What is Aqua Data Server?

Aqua Data Server is designed to help organizations simplify and lower the cost of their Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing environments by streamlining the development and production deployment of ETL (Extract Transform Load) tasks, Data Migrations, Reporting, Dashboards and Form based web applications. Database Administrators, Software Developers, Data Analysts, Statisticians and Quality Assurance Engineers can centralize and automate various data processing tasks in a simple and unified product.  Aqua Data Server is a flexible cross-DBMS and cross-platform application server, fully integrated with the universal desktop database administration tool, Aqua Data Studio.

Aqua Data Server provides a rich Open API for accessing, manipulating and visualizing data from many data sources.  These APIs are accessible from scripts, known as AquaScripts, which may be easily deployed into projects within Aqua Data Server.  The scripts use a simple JavaScript based programming language supported both in Aqua Data Server and Aqua Data Studio. AquaScripts deployed on Aqua Data Server can be executed by multiple users simultaneously, or scheduled for automatic execution with the Aqua Data Server scheduler. AquaScripts are grouped in the project areas of Aqua Data Server which provide login security access, drop in permissions, parameterized launch of AquaScripts and rich GUI features.

With Aqua Data Server, the data processing scripts deployed on the server can be executed by many users from a centralized location. Results will only be distributed to intended recipients in the form of emails, HTML reports or Excel spreadsheets.

The Open APIs behind the script engine allow users to query and modify multiple server connections from a single AquaScript, even when dealing with multiple relational database management systems from several vendors.

Aqua Data Server offers a full-fledged scripting environment based on JavaScript, making it easy for developers to get started without learning a new programming language. Users can edit and debug AquaScripts either locally in Aqua Data Studio or directly on Aqua Data Server within the browser based GUI. Like all Aqua Data Studio documents, scripts can be placed into a version control repository to allow for team collaboration in developing solutions.  Once they are created and tested, AquaScripts can be deployed into production for access and execution by multiple corporate users.

Aqua Data Server works with Windows, Mac OS X and Linux on the Java 1.6 Platform. It is based on the Apache Tomcat application server and MySQL database for application metadata.  The web based GUI of Aqua Data Server supports IE, Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Safari web browsers. Aqua Data Server supports native connectivity with all major DBMS servers:  Apache Cassandra, Apache Derby, Apache Hive, DB2 LUW, DB2 iSeries, DB2 zOS, Greenplum, Informix, MongoDB, MS SQL Database (Azure), MS SQL Server, MySQL, Netezza, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Sybase ASE, Sybase IQ, Sybase Anywhere, Vertica, Teradata and Teradata Aster (nCluster). Other databases are supported through generic ODBC and JDBC drivers.

This section explains how all of this works by exploring the following Aqua Data Server Basic Concepts:

• Application GUI
• Project
• AquaScript
• Secure Storage
• Email Queue
• Job Scheduler
• Thread Execution and Licenses
• Locale Settings - Language, Date and Time