On August 5th, 2022, Can Tho City People’s Committee and Can Tho Department of Information and Communications cooperated with related units to organize a seminar “Building Can Tho City to be a smart city in the 2022 – 2025 period, with the vision up to 2030”. The seminar attracted the attention of leaders of the Departments of the provinces in the Mekong Delta region, business associations, small and medium enterprises in the province as well as the experts and scientists within and outside the country.
Shared database – The key to building a smart city
The project to build Can Tho city to develop into a smart city was approved by the People’s Committee under the No. 1652/QD-UBND Resolution (on August 2nd, 2021), focusing on implementing 10 key areas. With that said, the effective exploitation of synchronous databases (especially resident’s data, spatial infrastructure data), big data analysis, and forecasting serve citizens and tourists more than just urgent/first tasks.
Currently, Can Tho has been building 43 shared databases under the management of city departments and agencies in the fields essential to people’s lives. Typical examples can be mentioned as the Department of Natural Resources and Environment has 4 databases (database), including Base map (GIS); Land; Planning on land use and natural resources and environment; The Department of Planning and Investment has 2 databases Enterprise and Project Information; Can Tho City Police has 4 databases including Population; Fire protection; Security cameras and data of residence;…
The common databases of each department were completed by the relevant units. However, for Can Tho to become a smart city, a prerequisite is that the city government must successfully build an integrated platform so that data can be shared quickly and conveniently between information systems of departments throughout the city.
Connectable open databases make an important contribution to creating an important resource system for cities. Applying the right technology to build a unified database for the whole city is the golden key to multi-function, opening the door to separate information databases; making the most of and maximizing the overall data about Can Tho city.
Participating in the seminar “Building Can Tho City become a smart city in the 2022 – 2025 period, with a vision to 2030”, FSI representative, Mr. Cao Hoang Anh – Deputy General Director shared about comprehensive big data processing and storage platform VLAKE – a platform to help solve data connection problems quickly, safely and effectively. VLAKE is a new technology platform researched and developed by FSI, based on 16 years of experience in implementing thousands of big projects for ministries and enterprises in the field of mining data.
Flexible connection, easy customization
“One of the problems of building a shared database and a centralized data store is the affection to the current operating systems and applications. In particular, many units are now using data systems built with traditional solutions, implemented by foreign units. The challenge arises when the system that makes the connection to the database has problems. The permanent support of a team of domestic technology experts will contribute to the fastest and most thorough resolution of problems when operating the data connection system,” shared Mr. Cao Hoang Anh.
Understanding that situation, VLAKE was developed to ensure that it can connect to all current database management systems MS SQL, Oracle, MySQL, etc. to receive and connect all data Structure Structured, Semi-Structured, Unstructured flexibly just by dragging and dropping and configuring settings on the system. This also helps VLAKE to integrate, connect, and collect data sources automatically, without depending on the original data source management unit and without affecting the activities of stakeholders.
Besides, VLAKE allows commercial computers to be used as storage and processing systems for big data. Because it does not depend on a specific type of hardware device, VLAKE saves investment and deployment costs for data connection and data processing systems.
Rapidly developing digital data storage
VLAKE allows the parallel processing of large amounts of data and high speed. Tasks are divided and processed in parallel on physical computers, helping the system process large data types at high speed. At the same time, due to VLAKE’s flexible connection technology, allows to create data warehouses easily and quickly, without reprogramming and independent of existing software and system developers.
Unlike other solutions on the market, VLAKE provides an intuitive processing tool that does not require complicated operations in terms of configuration, adjustment and administration. Vietnamese language, friendly interface helps to reduce the time to deploy and get used to new software, helping units to use the application faster in practice.
Mr. Cao Hoang Anh said: “FSI will soon continue to promote the research and application of new technologies (Artificial Intelligence, IoT) to build a digital transformation solution ecosystem for data as a comprehensive center, from data creation, data storage and processing to applying the results of data in operation to support leaders of agencies and organizations to make decisions quickly and exactly.”
