Industry
Life Sciences
Challenge
AbbVie’s iQ platform faced performance and compliance risks - slowed by resource-heavy harmonization, technical debt from DHF workarounds, upgrade blockers, and costly maintenance that hindered innovation and advanced search adoption.
Solution and Results
Datavid modernized AbbVie’s iQ platform by replacing DHF with a custom modular framework - built on reusable ml-gradle bundles, a plugin-based flow engine, and CORB2-powered batch execution. The result was faster development, efficient record-level harmonization, reusable components across projects, an open upgrade path to MarkLogic 11/12 with advanced features, and lower maintenance costs through reduced complexity.
Technology used
Progress MarkLogic Server 11, mlcp, Gradle + ml-gradle , XQuery, CORB2
About AbbVie
AbbVie is a global biopharmaceutical leader dedicated to solving serious health challenges through advanced science. With a strong legacy in immunology, oncology, neuroscience, and eye care, AbbVie consistently ranks among the world’s top pharmaceutical companies for its innovation and impact on patients’ lives.Setting the Scene
AbbVie’s iQ platform is a cornerstone for R&D knowledge access, giving scientists and research personnel fast visibility into critical information stored across multiple repositories. From GxP-regulated corporate quality documents to training materials and pharmacovigilance guidelines, iQ consolidates policies, procedures, and learning content into a single, searchable interface.
The platform was originally built on MarkLogic’s Data Hub Framework (DHF), which provided the powerful capability to harmonize and index AbbVie’s diverse content sources. This foundation enabled AbbVie to unify complex data in a way that would have been difficult to achieve with traditional systems.
As AbbVie’s requirements grew, however, the organization needed even greater flexibility, maintainability, and upgrade readiness than DHF was designed to deliver.
In order to stay aligned with MarkLogic’s innovation roadmap and take advantage of new capabilities such as vector search, AbbVie launched a modernization initiative. Datavid partnered with AbbVie to reimagine iQ’s architecture, building on MarkLogic’s strong core while making it more extensible and future-ready for evolving scientific use cases.
The Challenges
AbbVie faced a number of challenges with its legacy iQ system, which was originally built on MarkLogic’s Data Hub Framework (DHF).
The harmonization process was slow and resource-intensive, requiring full dataset reprocessing even for minor updates.
Over time, the framework’s constraints also led to cumbersome workarounds, forcing developers to implement complex patches that added to technical debt.
Because DHF was no longer supported in newer versions of MarkLogic, AbbVie also encountered upgrade blockers that prevented the organization from taking advantage of advanced features such as vector search.
In addition, the hidden complexity of the framework made troubleshooting, extending, and maintaining the platform more costly and inefficient.
Collectively, these issues risked slowing the evolution of iQ and made it more difficult for AbbVie to maintain compliance while ensuring that its research platform remained on a secure, supported foundation.
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The Solution
The migration of iQ from its legacy setup to an enhanced data architecture delivered immediate improvements and long-term strategic value while continuing to leverage MarkLogic's strengths.
- Modular libraries: Built as ml-gradle bundles, each module handled specific functions like ingestion, harmonization, or indexing.
- Plugin-based flow engine: Reusable steps could be orchestrated across multiple pipelines, reducing duplication.
- CORB2-powered execution: A leaner, faster approach to batch processing replaced DHF’s heavier flow runner.
- Seamless integrations: Existing external data pipelines and user-facing functionality were preserved, ensuring continuity for end users.
This approach gave AbbVie a transparent, fully owned architecture, one that removed vendor bottlenecks and positioned iQ for long-term scalability.
The Outcomes
The migration of iQ away from MarkLogic’s DHF delivered both immediate improvements and long-term strategic value.
Faster development & deployment
With full ownership of the framework, AbbVie’s team can now develop and release new functionality at a much faster pace. They are no longer constrained by DHF’s slow release cycles or hidden framework complexity, enabling quicker response to business and research needs.
Efficient data harmonization
Instead of reprocessing the entire dataset during updates, the new framework allows harmonization to focus only on new or changed records. This targeted approach reduces processing time, ensures fresher data is available sooner, and optimizes system resources.
Reusable framework across projects
The modular design created benefits well beyond iQ. Other initiatives within AbbVie quickly adopted the new components to accelerate delivery. By reusing the framework, teams were able to deliver prototypes significantly faster demonstrating its multiplier effect across the R&D IT ecosystem.
Unlocked MarkLogic upgrade path
Perhaps the most critical outcome was the ability to upgrade iQ to MarkLogic 11 and prepare for MarkLogic 12. This ensures AbbVie can leverage advanced features such as vector search, keeping iQ both compliant and innovative as MarkLogic evolves.
Lower maintenance costs & reduced complexity
By eliminating technical debt and simplifying the architecture, AbbVie reduced the cost and effort of maintaining iQ. The platform is now easier to support, extend, and secure, ensuring it remains reliable for today’s needs and resilient for the future.
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