The following diagram depicts a 10,000 ft view of an architecture that is capable of handling vast amounts of data efficiently and effectively. I have marked it as View 1 because I want to provide readers with different views of the same reference architecture. I prefer to refer to such views as perspectives on the same architecture, but focused on slightly different aspects, according to the target audience.

The reference architecture in the following View 1 is designed for someone who is starting in a world where data dominates over business processes. As we progress, we will start to define more and more of these views to provide a 360^o view of the same architecture. This will give readers a better understanding of each and every aspect of the reference architecture, thereby broadening their knowledge and understanding of data-intensive systems.

You can think of the following reference architecture as a component architecture, although the components themselves can be considered standalone systems. This reference architecture helps to guide you through the high-level processes that are involved in data-intensive applications. You will find that all the major vendors of data systems, or even companies dealing with handling huge amounts of data for their customers, have their own reference architecture. The interesting point is that, almost always, the same set of components is present in all these reference architectures.

Let's start with the most simple reference architecture and let it evolve over the course of the chapter into a more comprehensive and detailed architecture:

As you can see, the preceding diagram outlines eight major aspects of any system that needs to handle vast amounts of data. Let's briefly look at each one of them in a bit more detail.