Navigating Boundless Data Streams With The Swim Kernel

Sep 18, 2019

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Summary

The conventional approach to analytics involves collecting large amounts of data that can be cleaned, followed by a separate step for analysis and interpretation. Unfortunately this strategy is not viable for handling real-time, real-world use cases such as traffic management or supply chain logistics. In this episode Simon Crosby, CTO of Swim Inc., explains how the SwimOS kernel and the enterprise data fabric built on top of it enable brand new use cases for instant insights. This was an eye opening conversation about how stateful computation of data streams from edge devices can reduce cost and complexity as compared to batch oriented workflows.

Announcements

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Your host is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Simon Crosby about Swim.ai, a data fabric for the distributed enterprise

Interview

Introduction
How did you get involved in the area of data management?
Can you start by explaining what Swim.ai is and how the project and business got started?
- Can you explain the differentiating factors between the SwimOS and Data Fabric platforms that you offer?
What are some of the use cases that are enabled by the Swim platform that would otherwise be impractical or intractable?
How does Swim help alleviate the challenges of working with sensor oriented applications or edge computing platforms?
Can you describe a typical design for an application or system being built on top of the Swim platform?
- What does the developer workflow look like?
  - What kind of tooling do you have for diagnosing and debugging errors in an application built on top of Swim?
Can you describe the internal design for the SwimOS and how it has evolved since you first began working on it?
For such widely distributed applications, efficient discovery and communication is essential. How does Swim handle that functionality?
- What mechanisms are in place to account for network failures?
Since the application nodes are explicitly stateful, how do you handle scaling as compared to a stateless web application?
Since there is no explicit data layer, how is data redundancy handled by Swim applications?
What are some of the most interesting/unexpected/innovative ways that you have seen the Swim technology used?
What have you found to be the most challenging aspects of building the Swim platform?
What are some of the assumptions that you had going into the creation of SwimOS and how have they been challenged or updated?
What do you have planned for the future of the technical and business aspects of Swim.ai?

Contact Info

Parting Question

From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?

Closing Announcements

Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to check out our other show, Podcast.__init__ to learn about the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used.
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The intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

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