Vertica Integration with ScoreFast: Connection Guide

Applies to Vertica 7.0.x and earlier 

About Vertica Connection Guides

Vertica connection guides provide basic information about setting up connections to Vertica from software that our technology partners create. These documents provide guidance using one specific version of Vertica and one specific version of the third-party vendor’s software. Other versions of the third-party product may work with Vertica. However, other versions may not have been tested. This document provides guidance using the latest versions of Vertica and ScoreFast on Amazon cloud as of July 2016.

ScoreFast Overview

ScoreFast is a predictive analytics platform designed for public and private cloud deployments. ScoreFast provides a wide range of machine-learned algorithms and models to meet your business needs and automate the process of deploying models into run-time environments using an API. ScoreFast also provides dashboards for data audits and model performance.

ScoreFast now supports Vertica as a source through which you can load data and build models. ScoreFast connects to Vertica using the Vertica 7.0.x JDBC driver, which is embedded in the ScoreFast platform. You can connect to Vertica on the ScoreFast cloud or by running on a public IP address. ScoreFast has to be deployed on-premises for connecting Vertica instances running behind firewalls.

This document is based on the results of testing the Vertica 7.x JDBC Driver with ScoreFast deployed on ScoreData's cloud.

To get the account and licenses for using ScoreData's cloud platform to test Vertica as a source, contact ScoreData.

Connect Vertica to ScoreFast using JDBC

To connect your Vertica database to ScoreFast, complete the following steps.

  1. Login to the console here.
  2. Under the Admin tab, click Add Storage.

ScoreFastAddStorage.PNG

  1. Select the Vertica Storage Type and enter your connection information.
  2. To verify your connection to Vertica, click Test connection.
  3. Click Save. Your Vertica database connects to ScoreFast, and you can now begin importing data.

Importing Data

  1. Under the Data Management tab, click Import Data.
  2. To add tables, click New Data Source.ScoreFastImportingData.png
  3. Enter your data information as shown in the following graphic:

 ScoreFastImport2.png

  1. Click Save.

Your data imports to ScoreFast.

To view your data on the ScoreFast storage, click Update. The Update data screen appears, as shown in the following graphic:

 ScorefastUpdatescreen.png

Build Models

After you have established a connection to your Vertica database, follow these steps to begin building models.

  1. Under the Model Management tab, click Build Models. The Build Models screen appears.
  2. Enter the information for the following fields:
    • Display name: The name you want to use to refer to the model
    • Category: The analysis you want to run
    • Train: The train datasource
    • Test: The test datasource
  1. Select a model type.
  2. Check the box next to your desired Model Algorithm. You can choose more than one.
  3. To begin building your model, click Submit.

To build additional models, click Build more models.

Compare Models

After building two or more models, follow these steps to begin comparing them.

  1. Under the Model Management tab, click Compare Models. The Compare Models screen appears.
  2. Under Select Models to Compare, click the drop-down menu. Check the boxes next to the models you want to compare. You can choose a maximum of four models.
  3. Type the name of the source you want to test.
  4. Click Compare, as seen in the following graphic.

 ScoreFastCompareModels.PNG

Known Limitations

The current implementation of ScoreFast uses Vertica as a source and does not push down any computations or in-database analytics to Vertica.

ScoreFast does not perform incremental fetches of data from Vertica. You need to re-fetch all of the data if there are any changes in the data on the Vertica instance.

For More Information