Sybase Data Federation software has several flexible capabilities, such as data services and view generators, that let you manipulate data in any format appropriate for your application. However, Data Federation uses SQL rowsets and XML as the primary means for representing data. A rowset is a self-describing sequence of rows, or tuples. Each row consists of several named and typed columns.
If you access Data Federation via ODBC, you will work with the corresponding ODBC abstractions.
Data Federation also includes support for representing and manipulating data using XML. In data services and view generators, for example, you can use XSLT to perform data integration and transformation operations.
A unique capability of Data Federation is the ability to transform rowsets into XML on demand and to use either rowsets or XML as batch input to database operations. This conversion is on the fly; the XML is produced from the rowset as needed. Thus, a large rowset rendered in XML does not need to be represented in memory all at once, either as a rowset or as XML.
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