What is a Tetra Agent?

A Tetra Agent is software that runs on a client computer to actively extract a copy of information from a data source (such as a scientific instrument or files on a file system), and then transmits that information over a secure network to a private, cloud-based repository. You install and configure Tetra Agents on-premises based on your organization’s environment and data requirements.

Data Acquisition

You can automatically acquire data from heterogeneous sources while connecting with life science industry’s top instruments and software. Tetra Agents are used in the first step of the data acquisition phase within the Tetra Data Platform (TDP) and are responsible for acquiring data from those data sources.

Tetra Agents can collect as much data as you want: RAW, method, results, images, logs - everything!

How Does a Tetra Agent Work?

You install a Tetra Agent to run on the computer(s) or network from which data is needed, and then configure the Tetra Agent to determine which data you want to collect and transmit. The information you enter in the Tetra Agent is authenticated with your system. Based on the data types you specified and filtered, a copy of the data is extracted and securely sent to the Tetra Lake.

Tetra Agents are integrated with the Tetra Data Platform through a data connector (which may be a Cloud Data Connector or Generic Data Connector) and Data Hub. After the RAW data is uploaded to the TDP through a data connector, the data is placed into a S3 bucket (a public cloud storage resource available in AWS) secured within the Tetra Lake. You can configure how users in your organization access data in the Tetra Lake.

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Tetra Agents and the TDP

Once the JSON-formatted file containing your data is in the Tetra Lake, you can configure a pipeline to automatically process and convert the data to an Intermediate Data Schema (IDS), a vendor-agnostic schema. Additionally, you can integrate the data files with downstream analytics data visualization or data science tools.

Benefits of a Tetra Agent

  • Scalability and Customization—Tetra Agents can be customized to a specific scientific instrument type thereby making data more accessible and actionable for scaling research.
  • Automation—Tetra Agents can run locally on-premises to automatically collect and upload data to the Tetra Lake and can perform regular automatic backups of the database.
  • Monitoring and Diagnostics—Ability to monitor, track, and detect changes in data while viewing data logs and diagnostics in real-time.

Supported Tetra Agents

The TDP supports several Tetra Agents that aggregate and transfer source data to the Tetra Lake:

Tetra AgentDescription
Tetra Chromeleon AgentHigh-performance Windows-based solution built on the Thermo Fisher Chromeleon 7 SDK to extract injections and associated data (for example, Spectral, Peak, Sequence, and Audit Trial) from Thermo Chromeleon 7.
Tetra Empower AgentHigh-performance Windows-based solution built on the Empower 3 Toolkit to extract data from Waters Empower 3.
Tetra File-Log AgentHigh speed, instrument-agnostic Agent that detects the changes of file-based outputs generated from instruments. It requires either a:
- Tetra Generic Data Connector (GDC) installed on a Data Hub, or
- Tetra Cloud Data Connector (CDC) for file uploads
Tetra IoT AgentSupports IoT (Internet of Things) devices and applications.
Tetra LabX AgentHigh-performance Windows-based application that accesses the LabX Integration service, and extracts task and its related data.
Tetra UNICORN AgentHigh-performance Windows-based application that acquires AKTA batch data through the UNICORN OPC HDA Service and detects the Alarm and Events generated from UNICORN in real time.

Resources

TetraScience provides the world’s first open R&D Data Cloud, with a mission to transform life sciences R&D, accelerate discovery, and improve human life.

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