Sourcefromgroup

Sourcefromgroup refers to a design pattern or utility in data integration and service orchestration that selects a source data stream or service from a predefined group of sources. The concept emphasizes grouping related sources and routing requests to one member according to defined criteria.

It can be implemented in ETL pipelines, data ingestion systems, or API gateways. A source group typically consists of metadata about each source, such as endpoint, reliability, latency, freshness, and access permissions. A separate component, the source selector, applies a policy to choose an active source and may support fallback to other sources if the primary is unavailable.

Variants include static groups, where the composition is fixed at deploy time, and dynamic groups, where sources can register or unregister at runtime. Selection criteria may include data freshness, response time, historical reliability, cost, and access authorization. Some implementations cache the chosen source for a configured window to reduce selection overhead.

Benefits include improved resilience through redundancy, load distribution, and centralized control over source eligibility. It also decouples consumers from individual sources, simplifying maintenance. Challenges include ensuring consistent state across sources, managing latency added by the selection step, and monitoring the health of all group members.

Typical use cases include content delivery networks that select a nearby or fast upstream, API gateways that route to multiple microservices, and data ingestion pipelines that pull from multiple sensors or data feeds. In practice, sourcefromgroup is often a feature of orchestration platforms or middleware.

Related concepts include source selection, failover, redundancy, ETL design patterns, and service discovery.