Data Services

Data services are powerful integration tools that you can use to combine and transform data according to your requirements.

Like a database operation, a data service provides access to data for end users and applications. But it is not limited to accessing a single database, or even to database sources. A data service can combine data from multiple sources, including database operations (for database data), files, HTTP sources, and other data services. Data services can also transform and filter data using relational operators like select, aggregate, join, and projection. Further, you can build a data service that executes several operations as a single transaction.

Once set up, a data service is reusable across applications—an important benefit to development productivity.

There are several ways to set up a data service. The easiest is to use WorkSpace Data Federation to create a view model. You can also create a data service by writing a custom data service plug-in in Java, JavaScript, or XSLT. You can use WorkSpace Data Federation to deploy (create data services from) view models and custom data service plug-ins written in Java. Use the Web UI to deploy custom plug-ins written in JavaScript or XSLT.

Like the results of database operations, the results of data services can be cached throughout the Data Federation domain for improved performance.

Data services must be configured by members of the DataProviders group.