Edge profiles
In Adobe Experience Platform, Real-Time Customer Profile is the single source of truth for entity data. This profile data sits in a central hub, and caters to use cases that rely on the comprehensiveness and completeness of your data. However, in more real-time use cases, where time sensitivity is more important, edge profiles are the preferred option. Edge profiles are lightweight profiles that sit on edges and help in real-time personalization use cases.
For example, Adobe applications such as Adobe Target, Custom Personalization Destination, and Adobe Campaign use edges in order to provide personalized customer experiences in real-time. Data is routed to an edge by a projection, with a projection destination defining the edge to which data will be sent.
Terminology terminology
When working with edges, make sure to understand the following concepts:
- Edge: An edge is a geographically placed server that stores data and makes it readily accessible to applications.
- Edge projection: An edge projection is the system projection view of profile on a specific edge to represent profile data with a unique ID conforming to a given schema for a given customer. For example, an entity respecting the Profile schema with ID
CJsDEAMaEAHmCKwPCQYNvzxD9JGDHZ8, visitor of the Luma website, replicated to the VA6 data center, containing the fieldsage = 35andgender = male.
In other terms, data is routed to an edge by a projection, with the projection destination defining which edge the data will be sent to.
Available regions regions
The following regions are available for usage with edge:
- VA6
- OR2
- IRL1
- AUS3
- SGP3
- JPN3
- IND1
All of these regions are valid options for profiles to land in.
Available services services
The following services are enabled for Profile lookup on edge:
Projection Worker Service mepw
The Projection Worker Service (MEPW) monitors changes happening on the hub on profiles. After examining the changes in the configurations, this service prepares the projections and sends them out to the previously specified edge regions. Additionally, this service processes the entity refresh requests and sends out the required projections to the necessary regions. Entity refreshes are used to ensure the entity can be accessed with high availability.
Express Profile Service xps
The Express Profile Service (XPS) retrieves the profiles on the different edges. This service receives requests from downstream solutions, such as Adobe Target or Custom Personalization destinations, and looks up the profiles from the databases on the edges, and sends the requested profile to the requesting solution. If the profile isn’t found, a refresh request is send to the associated hub.
Next steps
After reading this guide, you should have a basic understanding of edge profiles, including information on the available regions and services for edge profiles. For more information on Adobe Experience Edge, please read the Edge Network overview.
Appendix
The following section lists frequently asked questions regarding edge profiles:
What regions can edge profiles land in?
Edge profiles can land in different regions depending on the situation at hand.
Additionally, every edge profile has a schema attribute called the User Activity Region (UAR). All the edges this profile has visited in the last 14 days are listed in this profile attribute. As a result, when this attribute is present in a profile, any changes to the profile are also sent to all the regions listed in the UAR.
How does data expirations work with edge profiles?
For edge profiles, data expiry determines how long the profile will stay on edge before it is removed. Data expiry is rolling, which means that every time the profile is accessed on edge, the data expiry time resets. By default, the data expiration lasts for 14 days.
What data is stored on the edge profile?
Edge Profile stores the profile attributes, profile IDs, as well as qualified audience IDs. By default, the data expiration lasts for 14 days.