External Data Mart overview

Last Updated : Feb 23, 2023 |

External Data Mart (EDM) is an optional feature of the ContextStoreManager snap-in service. Using EDM, you can connect and persist data from Context Store to an external, customer-provided database. To use this feature, you must install any of the databases that Context Store supports, create the required tables, and configure the relevant parameters in the ContextStoreManager section.

You can use EDM for:

  • Persistence and retrieval of contexts beyond the limit of the in-memory data grid lease time

  • Audit Trail or Customer Journey functionality

  • Provisioning of Context Store data

For more information on the supported databases, see the Supported databases section in this document.

Context Store provisioning and persistence of data to EDM

While Context Store provisioning and the data persistence to EDM features share the same ContextStoreManager EDM attributes, they operate independently. You can enable Context Store provisioning or data persistence EDM or both on a cluster.

  • Provisioning Context Store with data from the database: The Context Store space queries the database on start-up for entries in the database and writes them into its data grid with infinite leases.

    Note:

    This option is not available on Avaya Oceana® deployments.

  • Persistence of data to an external database: The EDM Mirror Service listens to the replication channel of the Context Store data grid and adds entries to the database for every operation on a flagged context.

Note:

  • The EDM Mirror Service captures any context added to Context Store, including the contexts added using the provisioning feature and persists to the EDM database.

    If EDM Mirror Service cannot reach the EDM, the EDM redo logs save approximately 30 minutes of context data from before the time the EDM is reconnected is provided for different deployment scenarios in the Data-grid Configuration Settings – ContextStoreManager Attributes section of the Context Store Release Notes.

  • If you enable the EDM persistence and EDM provisioning features, it writes the provisioned context data into the persistence table each time the cluster is restarted. That means that there are near-identical entries in the persistence table, the only differentiation being the time-stamp of the object.

When you install Context Store Manager, External Data Mart validates the database tables in the external database that you configure. If the tables are not present or do not match the required database schema, the External Data Mart feature installation fails. If External Data Mart fails to install, Context Store raises an alarm to System Manager.

Important:

If you are a standalone customer of EDM, ensure that your EDM database adheres to data privacy laws.