Unified data management method and system for industrial automation

A data processing system for an automation system, comprising:

• one or more processors, and
• non-transitory memory storing a software stack comprising computational modules executable by the one or more processors, the software stack including a unified data management module configured to:
• receive a query request via a unified query API layer configured to expose a common interface for accessing data from a persistent storage layer including a plurality of data stores that ingest data respectively from a plurality of data sources in the automation system, wherein the plurality of data stores include different access APIs and data schema,
• extract query parameters from the unified query API layer and use the extracted query parameters to build a dedicated query structured for a specific data store by a query builder utilizing a semantic layer, wherein the semantic layer is configured to map queries to individual data stores based on context information derived from query parameters and provide access to individual data stores based on their respective access API and data schema, and
• execute the dedicated query directly on the specific data store by a query engine and return a query result via the unified query API layer.