Getting Started with AltData

This section is designed to help you understand some key technical concepts on how AltData works under the hood.

How to use AltData

AltData is used in combination with the Workflow Engine to provide access to business rules, global alerts, and automated decision making based on the data obtained from the AltData sources.

To begin leveraging AltData, you can check out our Workflows engine guide.

Requests

The workflow engine can make requests to AltData to obtain information from different sources. These requests can be made synchronously or asynchronously, and can be retried in case of failure, to account for external source outages or errors.

• Sync requests deliver data from specified sources within a set time limit, ideal for use cases requiring data in a short timeframe.

• Async Requests immediately returns an ID, allowing the workflow engine to retry the request multiple times to account for external source outages or errors, and avoid long wait times.

The type of request you make will depend on your workflow engine configurations and the time sensitivity of the data you need.

Response Structure Example

The response structure has two variable components, sourceData and data:

• sourceData contains the data that was obtained from the source.
• data contains variables calculated based on the data obtained from the source.

The fields within sourceData and data are specific to each source, you can find detailed information about the fields and their meanings in the documentation of each source.

Below is a possible example of the response structure:

{
    "data": {
        "ECU-PUB-0002": {
            "dateToAnalyze": "2024-02-08T18:36:19",
            "dataDictionaryKey1": 1,
            "dataDictionaryKey2": "value",
            "dataDictionaryKey3": [1, 2, 3],
            "requestId": "6c490e4f-9c02-47f6-9b1f-c86cc8256"
        },
        "ECU-PUB-0037": {
            "dateToAnalyze": "2024-02-08T18:36:19",
            "dataDictionaryKey1": 1,
            "dataDictionaryKey2": "value",
            "dataDictionaryKey3": [1, 2, 3],
            "dataDictionaryKey4": -999998,
            "requestId": "6c490e4f-9c02-47f6-9b1f-c86cc8256"
        }
    },
    "sourceData": {
        "ECU-PUB-0002": {
            "dateToAnalyze": "2024-02-08T18:36:19",
            "isSuccess": true,
            "requestId": "6c490e4f-9c02-47f6-9b1f-c86cc8256",
            "sourceId": "ECU-PUB-0002",
            "version": "v1",
            "sourceDataKey1": 1,
            "sourceDataKey2": "value",
            "sourceDataKey3": [1, 2, 3]
        },
        "ECU-PUB-0037": {
            "dateToAnalyze": "2024-02-08T18:36:19",
            "isSuccess": true,
            "sourceDataKey1": 1,
            "sourceDataKey2": "value",
            "sourceDataKey3": [1, 2, 3],
            "requestId": "6c490e4f-9c02-47f6-9b1f-c86cc8256",
            "sourceId": "ECU-PUB-0037",
            "version": "v1"
        }
    }
}

Special codes

We utilize certain special codes to indicate the status of a variable in the response:

• -99997: The answer is empty.
• -99998: Could not be calculated.
• -99999: There was an error processing the request.