whitepaper

Data Fabric
The next generation of data management
Build a data fabric to power collaborative, cross-functional projects and products.
Escape reactive workflows with a resilient digital foundation, no rip-and-replace
required.

© 2020 Stardog
 Table of Contents

Data fabric
The next generation of data management 03

Key principles of data fabrics

What new transformations can data fabrics unlock?

Modernize existing investments

Learn how Stardog works 11

Semantic Graph

Connect all the data that matters

Answer unanticipated questions quickly

Support multiple use cases with the same data

Virtualization

Inference

Connecting the Enterprise 21

The data fabric ecosystem

Creating an enterprise data model

Get a head start on data model development

Share access to socialize your data fabric

Build a compliant global data fabric

Get started today 27

Data Fabric [email protected] 02

Data fabric: the next generation of data management

The mandate for enterprise IT to deliver business value has never been stronger. 76% of

executives believe IT must be an active partner in developing business strategy. To succeed

in this daunting task, agility is key. However, enterprises are hampered by data strategies that

leave teams flat-footed when the market shifts or new questions arise.

Structured data management systems worked acceptably well when the enterprise data

landscape was itself predominantly structured. But the world is different now. The enterprise

data landscape is increasingly hybrid, varied, and changing. The emergence of IoT, rise in

unstructured data volume, increasing relevance of external data sources, and trend towards

hybrid multi-cloud environments are obstacles to satisfying each new data request.

The old data strategy centered around relational data systems is fundamentally broken. How

can enterprises shift from a reactive to a responsive data strategy?

Enterprise data fabrics offer the new way forward. The data fabric weaves together data from

internal silos and external sources and creates a network of information to power your

business’ applications, AI, and analytics. Quite simply, they support the full breadth of today’s

complex, connected enterprise.

Decrease time to insight by up to 90%

“Stardog enables you to browse through the data and all these

relationships. It’s a 10 to 1 savings. It’s not only less overhead, it’s

much better job satisfaction and getting the knowledge in hand that

you lacked before.”

Program Data Integration Manager,

Exploration Systems Division NASA

Data Fabric [email protected] 03

 Key principles of data fabrics

1. Data fabrics can answer unanticipated questions and adapt to new requirements.

2. Data fabrics bring meaning to data which leads to insight.

3. Data fabrics enable query across data silos and external sources, regardless of

data structure.

4. Data fabrics modernize existing systems; no rip-and-replace required.

5. Data fabrics connect data at the compute layer, not the storage layer. This connects

silos without creating another silo.

Data Fabric [email protected] 04

What new transformations can data fabrics unlock?

Data fabrics support cross-functional data connections that are key to creating and defending

competitive advantage. Today, it is critical to go beyond business-line transformation and

enable collaboration across the enterprise as well as with external partners.

Take supply chain for example. Traditional supply chain data systems are a relay race,

operating with linear handoffs and siloed, peer-to-peer links between systems. When

COVID-19 hit, supply chains globally collapsed. Some strain or even partial collapse was

inevitable; but it was made much worse by bad data strategy that treated supply chain as a

rigid system when, in reality, it’s a complex network of actors who had to be fully in sync to

adjust as needed.

The Old: A structured Supply Chain

Terminal Shipping
Trucking
Producer Customs Declarant Warehouse Last Mile Consumer
Operator Line Company

THE NEW: A digital Supply Network

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Data Fabric [email protected] 05

With a digital supply network powered by a data fabric, now enterprises can answer complex

questions they were previously blind to. “Show me all the lots of raw materials and associated

suppliers involved in the production of finished good lot 123.” Or, “How do COGS for product A

compare between these two regions?” Or, “Which manufacturers supplied the raw ingredients

involved in this customer complaint?”

But how exactly do data fabrics succeed where other approaches have failed?

1. First, data fabrics change the status quo by delivering meaning, not just data,

across the enterprise. This meaning is woven together from many sources: data

and metadata, internal and external sources, and cloud and on-premise systems.

Meaning is captured within the data model, with all context on each data asset

fully present and available, in machine-understandable form. With a data fabric,

people and algorithms can make better decisions while also reducing the

likelihood and risk of data misuse or misinterpretation.

2. Second, a data fabric delivers answers via powerful querying capabilities. A data

fabric is not a static thing; rather, it’s a queryable data layer, allowing users to

answer questions from across data silos. In a data fabric, query happens at the

compute layer above the actual storage layer. It’s at this compute layer where the

data fabric connects otherwise disconnected silos and systems. Data flows from

source to app and back again, constantly enriching and improving upon the data

fabric.

A data fabric is not static; rather, it’s a responsive,

! queryable data layer, allowing users to answer complex

queries from across data silos.

Data Fabric [email protected] 06

 3. Third, data fabrics weave together existing data management systems, enriching

all connected apps. They are the next step forward in the maturation of the data

management space. Data lakes once held the promise of centralizing an

enterprise’s assets, but failed to make the data usable. Data lakes fail precisely

because they tried to connect data at the storage layer, not at the compute layer,

based on data location rather than based on data meaning. Physical colocation of

information does not by itself accomplish data connection or provide meaning. An

older generation of storage-based integration systems, the data warehouse, is in

fact even less capable than data lakes since they only admit structured data to

begin with, leaving the semistructured and unstructured data silos completely

disconnected. Lately companies have turned to data catalogs to try to address

the bewildering diversity of their data landscapes. However, cataloging alone

doesn’t lead to connected enterprises.

These previous solutions failed in part due to hybrid, varied, and changing data, but also due

to organizational pushback. Data fabrics, however, are built for collaboration. By leveraging

and connecting these existing assets, data fabrics are driving a new breed of cross-functional

data management projects.

Modernize existing investments

While previous technologies such as data lakes,

Data silos are never going away
data catalogs, and data integration platforms have

promised to end data silos, the truth is, data silos

1. 2. 3.
are inevitable! They exist for very good reasons.

They allow for local control and governance when

it is important to a particular part of your business.

Some data must be stored apart from other data

1. Required for local control & governance
to comply with legal regulation or simply for
2. Mandated by regulation
legacy business reasons. Or data is just too
3. Optimized for a business unit
essential to business operations to bear the risk of

consolidating, eliminating, or modernizing it.

Data Fabric [email protected] 07

 Data silos are the result of enterprise data that is:

Diverse, and it's only becoming more diverse as unstructured data growth rates skyrocket.

Distributed across multiple systems in different places, particularly as hybrid and multi-cloud

computing become necessary.

Controlled by division business leaders who may have competing interests.

Enabled by vendors who want to lock you in to their solution.

Whereas previous data management solutions have focused on eliminating silos through

mastering, migration, consolidation, or governance; data fabrics offer a practical alternative to

fighting data silos. Rather than working against data silos, a data fabric leverages these data

silos without requiring further copies of data.

Instead of replacing legacy technologies, a data fabric works alongside existing investments

and improves their utility. This is because a data fabric is not a single solution, it is actually an

architecture design that operates at the compute layer and focuses on connecting data

wherever it resides. and, thus, actually improving upon existing data storage assets like data

lakes, data catalogs, warehouses, and other data integration platforms like MDM.

We can start to see now how “data fabric” actually works as a description of what’s really

going on: just like an ordinary fabric, which conforms to whatever it lays over, an enterprise

data fabric lays over existing data assets and connects to them via individual threads, and

weaves these sources together into a unified layer. By doing so, data fabrics actually

compound the business value of existing investments.

The key ingredient to this transformation? A knowledge graph.

Data Fabric [email protected] 08

 “In a data fabric approach, one of the most important components is

the development of a dynamic, composable and highly emergent

knowledge graph that reflects everything that happens to your data.

This core concept in the data fabric enables the other capabilities

that allow for dynamic integration and data use case orchestration.”

Gartner “How to Activate Metadata to Enable a Composable Data Fabric,” Mark Beyer,

Ehtisham Zaidi, 16 July 2020

Knowledge graphs are able to represent everything that happens to enterprise data because

they serve as a universal format for data, regardless of its source structure or location or

format. A knowledge graph replaces the current laborious process for integrating enterprise

data, which typically involves extraction, translation, modeling, and mapping between various

applications. The custom code required for modeling and mapping quickly becomes unwieldy

at large scale, slowing the pace of innovation and insight.

In contrast, a knowledge graph creates a reusable network of knowledge to power your

business. It easily represents data of various structures and supports multiple schemas.

Furthermore, it creates the semantic understanding of enterprise and third-party data that

provides critical access to business insight. This serves as the core of the data fabric, enriching

and accelerating existing investments.

Stardog’s Enterprise Knowledge Graph platform is uniquely able to deliver a data fabric

architecture without requiring rip-and-replace or building yet another data silo. After

implementing Stardog, enterprises achieve 50-90% improvement in time to insight,

dramatically cutting down on previous data preparation timelines.

Data Fabric [email protected] 09

In Practice

A leading global pharmaceutical company

evaluated several different tech stacks before

realizing they needed a more proactive data

strategy to support the company’s R&D goals.

While they had a data lake in place, their data

scientists were still mired in searching for data

needed for critical drug discovery analysis.

30% of active ingredients under evaluation

were sourced from external collaborations,

and they have limited control over the quality of this data. They needed a flexible solution that

could relate their internal experimental results to external and publicly available studies. They also

needed to be able to evaluate the many-to-many relationships within their R&D data, such as,

“Find a set of compounds which are creating a similar effect,” or “Find compounds which have

been tested in similar conditions and similar treatments.”

By implementing Stardog atop their data lake, they created a company-wide data fabric that

provides a consolidated, one-stop shop for 90% of their R&D data. Their data fabric brings data

access directly to data scientists and accelerates drug target identification and drug repurposing

efforts, helping deliver innovative new drugs to market faster.

“For us it was a natural choice to deviate from the pure

data lake technologies to a more sophisticated model.”

Head of IT Research Computational Biology and Translational Science

Data Fabric [email protected] 10

Learn how Stardog works

In this section we answer some common questions we hear about data fabrics:

How is graph different from relational data? Why do I need to change?

How is semantic meaning generated?

How exactly is data “enriched” and how does this impact analytics outcomes?

In the next section, Connecting the Enterprise, we’ll cover practical requirements of

implementation, including building a team, socializing your data fabric, and developing a data

model. Skip ahead to page 21 to get straight to work!

SEMANTIC GRAPH

The future of data management will

be based on semantic graph

Semantic graph is the beating heart of the data What it does:

fabric, responsible for creating meaning from data

silos. However, this isn’t its only contribution. Semantic graphs create meaning by

Semantic graph uniquely supports your ability to: mapping entities, their metadata, and

their relationships in an evolving

information network. Semantic graph,

1. Connect all the data that matters also called RDF graph, is the only

way to represent data that is natively

stored in other structures while

2. Answer unanticipated questions quickly
maintaining all relevant metadata and

context.

3. Support multiple use cases with the

same data

Data Fabric [email protected] 11

Connect all the data that matters

In order to create business value within the enterprise, you must be able to connect all the

data that matters. Some of this data will be stored in tables, but also in PDFs, webpages,

emails, and other semistructured and unstructured sources. Only semantic graph is able to

represent data that is natively stored in other structures and connect all relevant metadata and

context.

With Stardog, different data dialects and structures embedded in legacy systems can be

represented in the standard language of RDF. This allows for queries across relational

databases, NoSQL databases, documents, and even geospatial data—seamlessly.

Regarding Resource Description Framework [RDF], Gartner provides

“it is a simple data model with a standard syntax that can represent

information of any form. The true power of the RDF, however, is its

ability to explicitly and unambiguously capture meaning — or

semantics — in the data itself. Information architects can use the

RDF to create vocabularies that define and describe every element

in a particular domain. These vocabularies are shared and

accessible across systems, so data can leave home without fear of

being misunderstood.”

Gartner, How to Use Semantics to Drive the Business Value of Your Data,”

Guido De Simoni, 2 April 2020

The key to understanding how semantic graph integrates data is to know that it links or

connected related data, rather than transforming it. Each data object is assigned a unique ID,

to which all related information is linked. This unique process allows data owners to maintain

control of source data while enabling enterprise-wide collaboration.

Data Fabric [email protected] 12

 [
{
:
}
]

STRUCTURED DATA SEMI-STRUCTURED DATA UNSTRUCTURED DATA

Figure. Data and metadata from varied sources is unified within Stardog, creating a

network of knowledge to power your organization.

At this point, people typically start to worry about scale. But in fact, the largest information

integration projects on the planet already use this model. Look no further than your web

browser to see this in action. The Web contains a world of information, created by different

contributors, and accessible through a single browser. Google Search is also powered by a

Knowledge Graph, a network of 500 billion facts about five billion entities. Both Google and

the Web are proof for this model of large-scale, complex, and decentralized information

integration.

In Practice

Dow Jones uses Stardog to deliver personalized

news insights at scale to their corporate clients. By

unifying structured and unstructured data across

internal and external sources, Dow Jones

delivered an innovative new product to market.

read thE case study

Data Fabric [email protected] 13

Answer unanticipated questions quickly

What is it about this network of meaning that leads to data agility? It has everything to do with

semantic graph’s flexible data model.

“Formally transitioning from a relational model to that of linked data

was a huge strategic benefit to the bank. We are now able to design

and link domain models across organizations and silos.”

Executive Director

Top 5 US Bank

Semantic graph operates in stark contrast to relational data. Finding connections between

different relational databases requires time-intensive data modeling and query operations.

Each new question produces a new dataset with its own schema. That’s not sustainable for the

rate of new and unanticipated questions that the business wants to ask of its data. Today, data

and analytics leaders need to be able to quickly support iterative question and answer cycles

from the business and easily dig into new territory in their data.

Instead of rows and columns and tables and keys, semantic graph organizes information using

nodes and edges to represent for entities and the relationships between those entities. This

graph data model is fundamentally simpler than the relational model, yet it’s also far more

expressive and powerful, easier to modify, and endlessly extensible.

The model actually exists at the compute layer, not at the storage layer, which means you can

modify the schema at any time by adding new nodes and edges, you don’t have to struggle at

a point in time to come up with a single shared data model covering all current and future

enterprise data needs. It also means that the enterprise can have many different, even

mutually incompatible schemas, that all apply discretely to the common pool of connected

data. And that means you never have to force-fit emerging data sources and use cases to

adhere to standardized rules from an already outdated perspective. The result? The same data

can be reused for new questions, without starting from scratch.

Data Fabric [email protected] 14

Support multiple use cases with the same data

We just made a point worth diving more deeply into. What happens if you have many schemas,

as is typically the case in enterprises? Can there be one schema to rule them all? In an ideal

world, different use cases, organizations, lines of business, and applications would all see

things in precisely the same way. Since this is not an ideal world, however, more often than

not, that’s just impossible.

Stardog fully supports data reusability so that

product release
different use cases, orgs, lines of business, and

apps can share and reuse connected data without

stepping on each other’s toes or, just as crucially,

without requiring a single schema to rule all the

others. Stardog calls this capability schema

multi-tenancy, and it supports customers

deploying multiple use cases from the same data

fabric.

Ultimately, this is the key to how Stardog

protein discovery
customers achieve dramatic reduction in time to

insight: they are able to leverage previous work

and, just as importantly, avoid time-consuming,

winner-takes-all fights about the one and only one

schema for the business.

Data Fabric [email protected] 15

In Practice

A global bank with nearly $900 billion in total

assets uses Stardog for both IT asset

management and risk management. With the

banks people, IT assets, and controls

modeled within Stardog, the bank supports

dynamic inquiries from various analyst groups.

In particular, when a risk event occurs,

operational risk analysts use Stardog to

quickly assess the event against over 25,000

controls – measures instituted to prevent risk

events – to identify what control should have prevented the risk and how to manage these risks in

the future.

Historically, relevant data was stored across 15 separate applications, forcing analysts to run

ad-hoc reports in Excel. This was not only time-consuming but also made it impossible for analysts

to know if they had captured all data related to a particular incident. When analysts made

decisions with incomplete information, they left the bank exposed to future risk events and

possible financial loss.

The bank implemented a broad, reusable data fabric to identify relationships across the various

applications involved in risk management, including incident reporting, control registries and IT

asset management systems. Now, analysts can can traverse the linked information in Stardog to

uncover dependencies within the data and identify root causes of particular incidents.

Furthermore, they can proactively ask “what if?” questions to predict the impact of theoretical risk

scenarios, creating a more proactive risk strategy that allows them to triage and mitigate potential

risks.

Learn MORE

Data Fabric [email protected] 16

 VIRTUALIZATION

Virtualization is a critical capability for scalable data fabric design

Data virtualization is a cost-effective data integration technique because it eliminates the

expense of replicating, moving, and storing data multiple times. Virtualization connects source

data directly, cutting down on what would be an otherwise complex and cumbersome ETL

system, migrating data from dozens or even hundreds of systems and external vendors into a

single repository. Copying data for each new analysis leads to human error and data drift. It

leads to uncertainty about which data sources are trusted, current, or canonical. Data

virtualization provides access to live source data and it means you’re guaranteed to always

get the most up to date data every time you ask a question.

While data virtualization has skyrocketed in

popularity in recent years, every standalone data

What it does:
virtualization platform is based on a relational

data model. These systems are only as powerful

Data virtualization connects the enterprise
as the relational model itself, which means they
without requiring moving or copying
cannot easily connect semistructured or
source data, saving time and money and
unstructured data. They can only virtualize data reducing error from duplicated data. A

that can be neatly fitted into tables, rows, and data fabric based on Stardog exists at the

columns.

compute rather than at the storage layer

precisely because of Stardog’s unique,

patented data virtualization technology.

Because these data virtualization platforms don’t

have the power of semantic graph, they suffer

from exactly the same rigidity as other relational

systems. While they can protect data lakes from accidental edits, they cannot integrate data

that is of diverse structures, is externally sourced, suffers from frequently changing schemas,

has conflicting definitions, or has uneven properties.

Stardog’s Virtual Graph capability is the most mature and powerful graph-based virtualization

solution on the market. Virtual Graphs connect data across data silos, even without copying

that data into Stardog. Further, they provide a direct access line for external data sources.

Lastly, they offer a reliable scale-out mechanism. Stardog can also virtualize other Stardog

instances as well as other graph systems, including SPARQL endpoints.

Data Fabric [email protected] 17

This gives the users ability to scale out their data fabric by using multiple Stardog installations,

with each clustered instance storing up to 150 billion data points.

Since not all data can be virtualized, whether due to regulation or internal policy, Stardog

offers both graph virtualization and graph storage in a completely seamless blend. Use both in

combination to support the needs of different data owners while still feeding your data fabric

with all relevant enterprise data.

In Practice

At NASA, where the actual rocket science

happens, Stardog is powering the design, test, and

manufacturing lifecylce of complex systems like

Space Launch System, the biggest rocket in the

world. NASA uses Stardog’s unique blend of

graph-based storage and virtualization to connect

data silos across NASA centers, vendor sites, and

even across international borders.

read thE case study

Data Fabric [email protected] 18

 INFERENCE

Realize the full potential of your enterprise data

Stardog’s Inference Engine associates related information stored in disparate sources, and

then uses this rich web of relationships to discover new relationships within your data. By

expressing all the implied relationships and connections between your data sources, you

create a richer, more accurate view of your data.

Inference creates new relationships by interpreting connected data against your business

logic in the data model. A knowledge graph’s data model is often called an ontology or

vocabulary and lays out common relationships between entities. This allows companies to

describe complex domains, such as medicine, in which multiple facts, modeling constructs,

and business rules interact with each other to imply new connections.

Some examples of inference in action: linking

people to infrastructure via the applications they

What it does:
use, inferring new controls based on the similarity

of new incidents to past incidents, and inferring

Inference analyzes enterprise data and
links between investigators and therapeutic areas
infers new relationships, data values, and
based on the conditions being investigated in
properties from your data, increasing its
studies they're working on — the list goes on.

value exponentially. Like with any other

network, the value of connected

Stardog supports multiple inference schemas or enterprise data grows exponentially with

data models at the same time applied to the the number of connections, which is

underlying data fabric. By offering this support, exactly what Stardog’s Inference Engine

capability creates automatically in the data

Stardog can support multiple applications that
fabric.

require different interpretations of the same data!

This is possible because Stardog connects data at

the computation rather than storage layer. By

contrast, other data integration approaches, including data lakes and data warehouses,

connect data based on storage, in which case only one schema can be applied to that data.

Which is one reason enterprises have to continually create new data silos for every new

challenge or problem!

Data Fabric [email protected] 19

Stardog’s innovative Inference Engine goes

even further. Not only does it infer new data

connections, but it can explain any new

connection it creates. In contrast to black box

recommendation systems, which cannot

provide any explanation or rationale for their

results, Stardog’s Inference Engine can explain

all inferences and results in terms of data,

schema, and business rules. So users can

review how Stardog arrived at an answer and Figure. Ontologies are data models that show how

various concepts relate to one another.

the business logic referenced to do so. This

explanatory transparency is not only critical for

providing trusted results and accountability within an organization, but also necessary for

certain legal and regulatory requirements.

In Practice

NIH’s Models for Infectious Disease Studies

(MIDAS) Digital Commons facilitates collaborative

epidemiological research to respond to disease

outbreaks. Associating related research through an

ontology allows researchers to search across a

number of attributes, including pathogen type, host

data, and disease forecasters. Users can now

query over 700 mapped data sets, 62 indexed

software applications, and over 200 data-related

websites in 28 different formats.

read thE case study

Data Fabric [email protected] 20

Connecting the Enterprise

While a knowledge graph is the key ingredient of the data fabric, it is not the only thing you

need to be successful. Stardog has led dozens of companies through connecting their

enterprise and can advise on every step of the process.

In this section, learn how to best use Stardog alongside your existing data management

investments and how to successfully get started with your data fabric deployment.

The data fabric ecosystem

A successful data fabric requires leveraging and connecting existing source systems.

Stardog’s Virtual Graphs connects to existing data catalogs, data lakes, databases, and other

data management platforms, offering comprehensive support of the most important enterprise

data sources.

For data fabric deployments, Stardog recommends leveraging work completed in data

catalogs to accelerate data discovery and semantic enrichment within Stardog. Stardog Studio

provides an integrated development environment to access and import data and create

mappings between Virtual Graph sources, including data catalogs.

Using the data catalog as an input, Stardog builds a data map of your enterprise data assets.

This data map accelerates data fabric creation through partially automated learning and

auto-mapping of existing sources.

Data Fabric [email protected] 21

Data Fabric [email protected] 22
Creating an enterprise data model

A common question regarding deploying a data fabric is how to develop an enterprise-wide

data model. Many think this is a prerequisite to the initiative, and the undertaking may strike

you as potentially expensive and time-consuming.

In fact, you only need to define as many concepts as needed for your initial use case. Identify

a critical business problem to spearhead the broader data fabric initiative. Approach your data

fabric with an MVP mindset and do strictly the minimal work to accomplish the first significant

tranche of business value.

A key premise of Stardog’s platform is that data modeling is reusable. When things change,

simply write a new modular rule to amend the model and proceed with accessing your

connected data. Due to this reusable data modeling principle, the business value derived from

Stardog compounds over time.

In Practice

At one global pharma, in just 6 months of time with

one back-end engineers and two front-end

developers, a total of 13 enterprise data sources

were modeled and unified. The resulting

application was accessed by over 1,000 internal

users.

Data Fabric [email protected] 23

Get a head start on data model development

There are many public data models that Stardog can read, helping customers to accelerate

their data model development. A public data model may account for about 80% of modeling

required for your project, with the remaining 20% customized based on your proprietary data

or unique internal operations. Our team can help advise on publicly available data models that

can suit your use case.

Stardog has also committed to the

development of additional public data

models through the Cloud Information

Model (CIM). CIM aims to provide

ready-to-use data models for predefined

domains that are not tied to any application

or vendor.

Once you are ready to start modeling,

Stardog Studio’s modeling hub makes the

process of building a model to meet your

first use case even easier. For users new to

graph data modeling, it allows you to build a

Figure. Example schema for a Life
schema quickly using an intuitive interface.
Sciences-related model

You can import an existing open source data

model and modify it, or create a new model

right in Studio.

Share access to socialize your data fabric

With an MVP in hand, it’s important to socialize your data fabric. A data fabric would be

useless if the business meaning is locked away from the business. This lack of access has

traditionally occurred due to two reasons:

literal lack of access to the data; data is trapped in source systems or within IT only

inability to access due to skill gap, ie lack of workers skilled in manipulating graph data

Data Fabric [email protected] 24

Stardog continually strives to make data more broadly available and usable. Stardog offers

direct connections to popular business intelligence platforms via our BI/SQL server, which

converts graph data back into SQL to make it available through all major SQL variants. You

can use the BI/SQL Server to connect Stardog to any platform that runs on SQL. Or, you can

use our supported Connectors to BI platforms including Tableau, Power BI, cumul.io, Apache

Superset, Siren, IBM Cognos, Metabase, and RapidMinder.

Stardog improves upon the capabilities of these BI platforms. For example, as visualizations

are created in Power BI, Virtual Graph queries would run behind the scenes allowing users to

analyze data from multiple data sources as if all the data is stored in one data source. Similarly,

if you had a dozen different point-of-sale data sources, you can write a Stardog rule defining

the relevant columns as geographic coordinates so that Tableau can automatically display all

twelve sources on one map.

Data Fabric [email protected] 25

 Stardog

Access Method Used by

REST API Applications can access data from Stardog directly via a REST API endpoint.

BI/SQL Server Business analysts gain direct access to the breadth of unified data directly in

their BI platform of choice. Stardog’s BI/SQL Server allows any BI platform that

operates on any of the major MySQL variants to query Stardog.

CLI System administrators have the option to access Stardog directly via the

Command Line.

Stardog Studio System administrators and data modelers can use our IDE, Stardog Studio, to

query, visualize data, explore data models, and evaluate data provenance.

Stardog supports SPARQL, GraphQL, and Gremlin query languages.

Python Data scientists can access the unified data via Stardog’s python extension

pystardog. Data scientists can also use Stardog’s built-in machine learning to
extension
train models directly on the virtualized data.

Build a compliant global data fabric

Use Stardog’s data quality constraints to manage overall data quality and ensure

conformance with defined rules. Constraints also support measuring the quality of the data,

performing verification after an integration, and assisting in planning future improvement

measures.

As your data fabric grows, Stardog grows with you. Stardog also has the ability to query other

Stardog instances, which is key for compliance with data movement regulations. For

organizations with distributed environments, it is still possible to query across operating

entities without copying any data. Set each operating entity up with their own Stardog

instance and Stardog can easily execute a global query across all virtualized data.

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Get started today

Stardog makes it easy to get started with your data fabric. In addition to our platform detailed

above, we have the team and expertise to take you from MVP to global deployment! Contact

us to learn more about our customers who have successfully reduced time to insight 50-90%.

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Build your data fabric with Stardog
Say "yes" to every data request by creating a flexible, reusable data layer for answering
complex queries across data silos.

Stardog, the leading Enterprise Knowledge Graph platform, turns data into knowledge to
power more effective digital transformations. Industry leaders including BNY Mellon, Bosch,
and NASA use Stardog to create a flexible data layer that can support countless
applications. Stardog has been recognized by Fast Company as one of the world’s Most
Innovative Companies, by Database Trends and Applications as one of the 100 companies
that matter most in data management, and by KMWorld as one of the 100 companies that
matter most in knowledge management. Stardog is a privately held, venture-backed
company headquartered in Arlington, VA.

Contact us: [email protected]

Learn more: stardog.com

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