Nexma SyncEngine
Connect the world's data feeds
Nexma SyncEngine is the ingestion layer of the platform. It discovers, connects, normalizes, and continuously syncs hundreds of live spatial, sensor, and enterprise sources into the world model through one synchronization layer — so every decision runs on current, unified data instead of brittle one-off pipelines.
Every source speaks its own format, cadence, and projection. The conventional answer is a custom connector per source that breaks the moment an upstream endpoint changes, landing data in silos that never reconcile into a single picture. SyncEngine replaces that with a catalog of connectors and a normalization path into the Nexma DataStore.
Core concepts
- Source. Any external system SyncEngine can read — a live spatial feed, a sensor stream, or an enterprise system of record. Each source has a connector, a cadence, and a credential.
- Connector. The adapter that translates a source's schema, units, and projection into the world model on ingest. Hundreds are prebuilt; a connector framework covers proprietary or niche sources.
- Normalization. The step that maps each incoming record's format and projection to a typed entity, then reconciles identifiers so the same real-world object never appears twice.
- Sync. The continuous process that keeps a source live — polled or streamed on its natural cadence, applying only the changes that arrived since the last run.
SyncEngine connects the breadth of sources into the world model. For high-frequency, multi-protocol telemetry — fleet positions, live sensor readings — pair it with the Nexma Event Broker. They work together.
How it works
A source moves through four stages, from a catalog entry to a typed, current layer in the DataStore.
| Stage | What happens | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Discover | Browse the source catalog and enable a connector | Source registered |
| Connect | Authenticate with managed credentials and tokens | Live connection |
| Normalize | Map format, units, and projection; reconcile identity | Typed records |
| Sync | Poll or stream on the source's cadence; apply changes | Always-current world model |
Once a source is syncing, every surface reads the same reconciled data — the Globe, tables, and Jax all see the present, not last night's batch.
Connectors
SyncEngine ships connectors across the categories teams integrate most. The catalog grows continuously, and custom connectors cover anything not yet prebuilt.
| Category | Example sources | Typical cadence |
|---|---|---|
| Aviation | Live flights, airport status | Seconds |
| Maritime | Vessel positions, port congestion | Seconds to minutes |
| Weather | Radar, severe-weather alerts, forecast surfaces | Minutes to hourly |
| Earth observation | Wildfire detection, vegetation indices, imagery | Minutes to daily |
| Mobility | Traffic, transit, freight flows | Seconds to minutes |
| Cadastral | Parcels, zoning, permits | Daily to on demand |
| Enterprise | CRM, ERP, asset and work-order systems | Streaming or scheduled |
| Markets | Commodity prices for relevant verticals | Minutes to daily |
| Custom | Proprietary APIs, on-prem sensor streams | Source-defined |
Sources are enabled per project. Ones you do not enable never touch your project.
Connect and normalize
A connector does more than pull bytes. On the way in, it translates each source's schema, units, and projection into the world model so records land typed and consistent. When a project has an active Ontology, incoming records are typed against it — usable the moment they arrive, queryable by entity and property rather than by raw column.
Identity reconciliation matches identifiers across sources, so a vessel reported by two feeds resolves to one object rather than two duplicates. Credentials and tokens are managed centrally, keeping secrets out of scattered scripts.
Sync, scheduling, and health
Each source runs on its natural cadence — a scheduled poll or a live stream — with no manual jobs to babysit. Sync is incremental: only the records that changed since the last run are applied, which keeps the layer efficient even across very large datasets and avoids re-ingesting unchanged history.
Every source carries health telemetry:
- Freshness — how recently the source last delivered data.
- Throughput — the rate of records flowing in.
- Failures — connector errors, auth expiry, or upstream outages, with alerts when a feed goes quiet.
This makes a stale or broken feed visible immediately, rather than discovered when a decision turns out to have run on missing data.
Where it fits
SyncEngine is one of two ingestion paths into the platform. It handles discovery and breadth; the Event Broker handles real-time telemetry volume. Both write into the DataStore, where the Ontology gives every record meaning and Jax reasons over it through the eight generic primitives.
Where to go next
- Connecting data — a step-by-step guide to enabling and configuring sources.
- Nexma Event Broker — multi-protocol real-time telemetry ingest.
- Live data and the Globe — how synced feeds render on the map.
- Nexma DataStore — the world model every source syncs into.