A Scalable Architecture

A scalable solution can respond quickly to changes in demand and can operate across locations and departments—even across companies.

Sybase Data Federation provides a flexible and scalable information integration solution based on a distributed, pluggable architecture. Expertise and experience with grid technology have led to an architecture that addresses key challenges. Grid technology is about distributed architectures and sharing of resources, giving Data Federation a unique advantage and strength in data provisioning and access across departments, locations, and companies.

Each administrator manages a Data Federation domain. The administrator has total control over his or her own domain, so there is no need for a central administrator who controls all domains. Instead, administrators can create interfaces between domains that enable data owners in one domain to grant access to users or groups in the other. Sharing can be broad or limited, depending on business need. This approach enables sharing of data over an arbitrarily wide area, but maintains local administrative control over data sources, user management, and administration of the domain infrastructure.

Adding Capacity

Data Federation administrators can add capacity as needed by plugging in server components. They can address new requirements by adding users, data sources, and integrations to the grid. No specialized hardware is required, and in many cases, server components can be installed on existing infrastructure. Optional failover configurations make Data Federation a resilient solution that provides for maximum data availability.

Ease of Administration

A simple Web interface lets administrators perform common administration tasks, including:

Setup tasks such as server configuration, directory service integration, and failover configuration.
Data administration tasks such as making data available, configuring caching, and setting access rights. (You can also perform many of these tasks in WorkSpace Data Federation.)
Routine tasks such as monitoring, logging, and backups.

While Data Federation domains are surprisingly easy to manage, the biggest administrative benefit comes from reduced infrastructure complexity and from all the tasks that no longer need to be performed.