CData API Server vs. CData Connect AI vs. CData Python Connectors vs. Thingsboard Comparison Chart

CData’s AI offering is centered on Connect AI and associated AI-driven connectivity capabilities, which provide live, governed access to enterprise data without moving it off source systems. Connect AI is built as a managed Model Context Protocol (MCP) platform that lets AI assistants, agents, copilots, and embedded AI applications directly query over 300 data sources, such as CRM, ERP, databases, APIs, with a full understanding of data semantics and relationships. It enforces source system authentication, respects existing role-based permissions, and ensures that AI actions (reads and writes) follow governance and audit rules. The system supports query pushdown, parallel paging, bulk read/write operations, streaming mode for large datasets, and cross-source reasoning via a unified semantic layer. In addition, CData’s “Talk to your Data” engine integrates with its Virtuality product to allow conversational access to BI insights and reports.

It enables device connectivity via industry standard IoT protocols - MQTT, CoAP and HTTP and supports both cloud and on-premises deployments. ThingsBoard combines scalability, fault-tolerance and performance so you will never lose your data. Provision, monitor and control your IoT entities in secure way using rich server-side APIs. Define relations between your devices, assets, customers or any other entities. Collect and store telemetry data in scalable and fault-tolerant way. Visualize your data with built-in or custom widgets and flexible dashboards. Share dashboards with your customers. Define data processing rule chains. Transform and normalize your device data. Raise alarms on incoming telemetry events, attribute updates, device inactivity and user actions. Construct your ThingsBoard cluster and get maximum scalability and fault-tolerance with microservices architecture. ThingsBoard also supports both cloud and on-premises deployments.