Three of our technical experts will present a talk and demonstration at the November Data Works MD Meetup. Senior software engineers Bill Farmer, Ryan Hendrickson, and Elli Schwarz spend the workweek collaborating on complex technical challenges — they will bring their dataflow expertise to the Data Works group with their presentation, Connect Data and Devices with Apache NiFi.
The Meetup is scheduled for Thursday, November 7, from 6:30 pm until 8 pm in CACI’s auditorium at 2720 Technology Drive in Annapolis Junction.
Sign up here: www.dataworksmd.org.
What is NiFi?
Apache NiFi is an intuitive, scalable, and customizable system used to process and distribute data. It comes with an easy-to-use and appealing management UI, a large market of standard processors, and a vibrant Open Source Community supporting it.
About the presentation
An accessible how-to
Clarity’s team aims to provide an accessible how-to that will walk participants through NiFi basics, showing practical examples that are easy to follow. The Meetup group will learn how to use NiFi to move data across servers and networks, as well as how to manipulate, enrich, and stream data using custom processors.
Data manipulation and open-source tools
Specific how-tos will include performing data manipulation using:
- a custom Java processor
- the ExecuteScript processor, with JavaScript and Python
- the JoltTransformData processor
The team will demonstrate open-source tools, such as Jolt, jQ, and JsonPath. The presentation will explain how to prototype a REST service with standard processors. Expect light bulbs to flash from (exciting) things happening in NiFi!
About our presenting engineers
Bill Farmer is Clarity’s Vice President of Engineering and a Senior Software Engineer. He is responsible for seeking innovative solutions to his customer’s most challenging data problems. Bill has over 20 years of experience building data processing and visualization systems across a variety of domains including finance, transportation, and government. He specializes in full-stack web application development using Java, Spring, Python, and various JavaScript frameworks. Bill has experience with a number of ETL tools. His roles have included Software Engineer, DevOps Engineer, Technical Lead, and Engineering Manager. Bill has worked with NiFi since its inception as an Apache project. He holds an M.S. in Information Technology with a focus on Software Development from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh.
Ryan Hendrickson is a Senior Software Engineer and Clarity’s Director of Innovation. He has 11 years of software engineering experience. Ryan is a Software Project Co-Lead, and he participates in Data Works MD Meetups. He presented at CodeMash in 2019 and will return in 2020 to give a talk about horizontal scaling of graph databases (the NiFi team is also collaborating on this one). Ryan earned an M.S. in Information Systems Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and a B.S. in Software Engineering from Robert Morris University. He has significant experience developing dataflow pipelines, enriching and manipulating streaming data, and in the storage of large dataflows. Driven by an endless desire to “find a way,” Ryan is also an inventor, he holds two U.S. patents. In his free time, he enjoys his young family, playing hockey, and working on his 1966 MGB.
Elli Schwarz is a Senior Software Engineer at Clarity. He has 15 years of experience developing Java applications, creating custom data processing solutions, and applying specialized data models and ontologies to facilitate data exchange. An Apache NiFi enthusiast, he pushes NiFi to its limits to perform complex ETL tasks for his clients. Elli has experience with various NoSQL databases such as MongoDB, ElasticSearch, AllegroGraph, Neo4j, and Redis. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
More on Data Works MD
From the website: Data Works MD is a monthly gathering of professionals, students, and enthusiasts living and working in the Maryland area that come together to discuss diverse topics related to data science, data analytics, data products, software engineering, machine learning, and other data engineering topics.
Meetups are held locally, usually once a month. Each event includes time to network with other members, sponsors, and partners.
Sign up for the November 7 NiFi talk and learn more about Data Works MD at www.dataworksmd.org.
