Architecting IoT Solutions on Azure

Chapter 8. Data Processing Architectures

Architecture—it’s the design behind what you build. Sure, you can build stuff without a plan, but it’s usually easier whenever you start to plan something first so you’re not stuck with a big ball of mud that is hard to use and maintain. Even as a fledgling developer in sixth grade, I liked to draw up grandiose plans for how I would write a program. It was needed even for simpler stuff and even more so for IoT, as the entire point of this book is IoT architecture. A big part of that architecture revolves around data processing architecture. Looking back at the IoT Landscape as seen in Figure 8-1, the three horizontal bars called hot path, cold path, and warm path are all about data processing architectures. These paths are general terms but have some nuances this chapter will unpack for you.

Figure 8-1. The IoT Landscape data paths

When you build an IoT solution, one thing you must ask is: “How will I process all this data flowing into Azure from all of my devices?” You’ve already touched on this in the previous chapter about data storage. Here, you’ll build on that and learn about the data processing loop, then explore different kinds of data movements in data processing. Once you have your head around that, you’ll get a taste of three different architectural flavors. So let’s pick up where we left off with data storage.

Data Storage ...