Today still, a lot of analysis is done in person. Engineers load recorded data with fat client analysis tools and work their way through their analysis. With a higher number of analyses, large data sets, and global enterprise-scale systems the approach will come to a limit.
Thus, many engineers in the domain face the challenge of losing time and resources by manually developing and executing their analyses. Results may get created redundantly and may not be comparable due to variations in algorithms. The worst case is, results are none-reproducible and insights are lost.
Our Merlin Analysis Server 2G is a second-generation and technology-independent analysis framework that integrates server-side analysis of captured data and hence streamlines the task of generating analysis results. It allows engineers to keep track of progress with testing and derive analysis results quickly by bringing the algorithm to the data and integrating it into automated workflows.
Merlin/SAM aims to automate analysis, achieve comparability of results, and provide process transparency with data lineage features.
Engineers typically use expert tools such as Matlab to perform individual analyses in person, which is time-consuming. Merlin/SAM targets standardizing repetitive analysis and report generation to reduce the time and effort needed for this activity. It also intends to solve the challenge of, for example, running fleet analysis or analysis on a large number of tests that are unsuitable for processing with individual desktop analysis.
Merlin integrates analysis management and orchestration into the Test Data Management system's processes by moving them from the individual engineer's hands to a server-side framework. While the engineer can still administer the evaluations, the execution is managed, and results become standardized—comparable and reproducible.
Merlin also provides job management features, including queuing, scheduling, monitoring, and event management. Evaluations can be triggered automatically by processes, importers, or the ASAM ODS notification service. End-user applications can also use these triggers for individual analysis.
Merlin/SAM has open processes and interfaces to develop integrated Test Data Management system evaluations. The aim is to enable customers and engineers to create new evaluation templates that users and automated system processes can use. While Merlin/SAM comes with predefined job stages and tasks, new aggregations can easily be added based on individual codes or scripts.
Merlin can handle items such as new measurements or channel calculations, document generation to be attached to the right entity, calculations for graphical representations, single calculated values or statistics, sending emails, or others.
Evaluations are configurable templates that contain one or multiple stages of individual tasks such as “select, aggregate, combine, group, collect, ...”. They can be dedicated procedures or pipelines. Merlin provides the framework to manage and orchestrate jobs transparently, which are executable instances of an evaluation with individual configurations, such as a measurement ID or thresholds.
Analysis results include new measurements or calculated channels, generated documents or reports attached to the correct entity, calculations for graphical representations, single calculated values or statistics, etc.. All results are obtained in a safe and secure environment and thus are comparable.
Merlin Analysis Server integrates user-developed algorithms and executes them with data from the Test Data Management system. Merlin as an engine connect algorithms with parameterization and configuration, input data (e.g. measurement IDs), and moves the package to an executor. The executor might be a JAVA or Python runtime, a Matlab runtime, or SPARK - depending on the job.
Merlin can be triggered by user input (web-application), the postman (ad-hoc), or by other services of the Test Data Management system such as the ModelMapper Importer, AReS Server or Avalon Server. The administrator may add, change or remove analysis programs, the end-user may only trigger them or consume their results.
Merlin is a framework that only manages and orchestrates created jobs. Job execution is outsourced to separate nodes and runtimes, such as a Python runtime on a separate machine. Merlin can manage multiple resources and technologies, allowing the system to scale on demand. The resources for aggregation calculations are independent of the Ares Libertas ODS6 Server.
Therefore, integrating big data technologies or processing platforms is feasible for high-performance analysis. Combined with the Ares Janus ODS Platform, a unified data lake can be used as a shared data source.
Security matters remain handled by the Ares Libertas ODS6 Server and corporate processes.
Merlin is a technology-independent framework that allows all types of algorithms. Merlin integrates algorithms and puts them into context with the data. The algorithm is still executed in its native environment, e.g.
Identifying events and key performance indicators (KPIs) is a specific analysis based on measurements. Events have a beginning and end marker derived based on the occurrences described in the data. KPIs are usually a single-value result type calculated within the event's beginning and end markers. An Event can have multiple KPIs.
The engineer can manage Event and KPI definitions in the same way that algorithms for the markers or the KPIs can be added, e.g., by providing a Matlab script to calculate an aggregation of data. Results of this type are usually provisioned in JSON format to be stored in Elastic Search or other preferred indexing services.
HighQSoft implemented a complete process that included eKPI definitions, job creation and execution, and results collection based on ASAM ODS, Apache SPARK, and Hadoop.
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