====Data Sources====

Before you can link any asset to live or historical data from your system, you will need to create one or more //data sources//, which are the origin points of your data.

Data sources represent the //physical// source for the data. For example, the database, remote I/O unit or server that the information is sourced from.

A [[driver|data driver]] is responsible for the actual communication. Many data sources may share a single driver, as each sources specifies an //origin point// for external information.For example, the specific MySQL server or Modbus TCP device to connect to.

A single [[asset|asset]] can be a data source for both [[live driver|live]] and [[historical_driver|historical]] information for each [[contexts|context]]. 

See [[Creating a Data Source]] for more information.