Component Integration Services

Component Integration Services (CIS) is a feature of Adaptive Server Enterprise. CIS allows Adaptive Server to present a uniform view of enterprise data to client applications and provides location transparency to enterprise-wide data sources.

CIS allows users to access both Sybase and non-Sybase data servers. These external data sources include host data files and tables, views, and remote procedure calls (RPCs) in data servers such as Adaptive Server Enterprise, DB2, and Oracle.

Replication with CIS

The CIS feature allows an Adaptive Server to act as a proxy for a non-Sybase data server. Replication Server connects to the Adaptive Server proxy database as if it were a normal Adaptive Server database. CIS then takes responsibility, along with a DirectConnect gateway, for translating the replication data and commands to the replicate data server's native formats.

Replication without CIS

The heterogeneous datatype support (HDS) feature of Replication Server can provide datatype translation that was previously available only with CIS. Datatype translation is accomplished using translation definitions installed in the RSSD. Command translations are provided with custom function strings and function-string classes.

Advantages and disadvantages of CIS

If you are a current user of CIS, there might not be an advantage to using the HDS feature of Replication Server. Both CIS and Replication Server HDS facilitate replication into a non-Sybase replicate database.

If you are not currently using CIS to communicate with a non-Sybase database, using the HDS feature of Replication Server provides some advantages over using CIS:

Replication system topography is simpler without CIS, and there is no CIS overhead.
You have some greater freedom of component location if you do not use CIS; you are not tied to an existing Adaptive Server location or required to install and maintain another Adaptive Server to decentralize the processing.
The HDS feature of Replication Server does not support replicating to a non-Sybase data server that is not supported by HDS. The HDS feature in Replication Server supports replicate databases only in DB2 Universal Database, Informix, Microsoft SQL Server, and Oracle data servers. Any other non-Sybase replicate database requires the use of CIS.

For more information about using CIS, refer to the Component Integration Services User's Guide, which is part of the Adaptive Server Enterprise documentation set.