What is Adobe Experience Platform (AEP)?
Adobe Experience Platform is Adobe's real-time customer data foundation. It standardises data with XDM schemas, stores it in datasets in a data lake, links identities, builds Real-Time Customer Profiles, evaluates audiences and activates them to destinations and Adobe applications.
Sources: Adobe Experience Platform documentation Experience Platform and applications architecture diagrams
What is Real-Time CDP and how does it relate to AEP?
Real-Time CDP (RTCDP) is an application built on Experience Platform. AEP supplies the data foundation (schemas, ingestion, identity, profile); RTCDP adds customer data platform capabilities, especially audience building and activation to marketing and advertising destinations.
Sources: Adobe Experience Platform documentation Experience Platform and applications architecture diagrams
What is Adobe Journey Optimizer (AJO)?
Adobe Journey Optimizer orchestrates real-time, cross-channel customer journeys on top of Experience Platform profiles and events. It handles journey design, messages, offer decisioning, consent-aware delivery and journey reporting.
What is Customer Journey Analytics (CJA)?
Customer Journey Analytics analyses Experience Platform datasets, online and offline, joined on a person ID. It adds cross-channel reporting, data views, stitching and Analysis Workspace on data you already hold in AEP.
Sources: Customer Journey Analytics documentation Customer Journey Analytics FAQ
How is AEP different from a traditional data warehouse?
A warehouse stores and queries data. AEP also standardises it in XDM, resolves identities, merges profiles in real time, evaluates audiences and activates them to channels, and enforces data governance labels and policies on activation.
Sources: Adobe Experience Platform documentation Getting started for data architects and data engineers
What are the main components of AEP?
Core components are the data lake and datasets, the schema registry (XDM), Identity Service, Real-Time Customer Profile, segmentation, the Edge Network for real-time collection and personalisation, Query Service, destinations and governance. Applications such as RTCDP, AJO and CJA sit on top.
Sources: Adobe Experience Platform documentation Experience Platform and applications architecture diagrams
What is a sandbox in AEP and why use one?
A sandbox is an isolated virtual environment inside one organisation. Use separate production and non-production sandboxes to test schema, dataset, audience and journey changes safely before promoting them.
Sources: Adobe Experience Platform documentation Copy a schema between sandboxes (Import endpoint)
How do I copy a schema from one sandbox to another?
Use the Schema Registry import endpoint (or the sandbox tooling in the UI) to move a schema, with its field groups and data types, into another sandbox so it can be tested or promoted.
What is the Edge Network?
The Edge Network is Adobe's globally distributed collection and personalisation layer. The Web SDK and Mobile SDK send events to it through a datastream, and it forwards data to Experience Platform and other Adobe services with low latency.
Sources: Implement the Web SDK (tutorial) Edge Network Server API overview
Which AEP component gives a single source of truth for customer profiles?
Real-Time Customer Profile. It merges attribute and event fragments from Profile-enabled datasets, using the identity graph and merge policies, into one view per person.
Sources: Merge policies Guardrails for Real-Time Customer Profile data
What are Profile guardrails?
Guardrails are Adobe's documented limits and recommended practices for Real-Time Customer Profile data and segmentation, such as sizes, counts and performance recommendations. Check them before modelling data or enabling datasets for Profile.
What is the Data Landing Zone?
The Data Landing Zone is Adobe-provided cloud storage (Azure Blob) in each organisation where you can drop files for ingestion or receive exports, avoiding the need to set up your own storage for simple batch flows.
Sources: Data Landing Zone
How should AEP be designed for several regions and brands?
Separate brands and regions with sandboxes and role-based access, share one XDM model where it fits, plan identity namespaces and consent per region, apply data usage labels and policies, and check residency requirements with current Adobe documentation and your legal team.
Sources: Experience Platform and applications architecture diagrams Regional Data Collection Data usage labels glossary
Where can I learn AEP hands-on for free?
Adobe publishes tutorials on Experience League, including the data architect and data engineer path and the Luma demo site. For guided labs and mentoring, see the Infinite360 Tech Academy programs.
Sources: Getting started for data architects and data engineers Adobe Luma enablement website
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Answers are AI-assisted summaries of Adobe's public documentation and the instructors' practice, written for learning. Product behaviour changes, so confirm details in the linked official page before relying on them.
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