Data Virtualization Basics
Welcome to the Denodo Platform Basic Tutorials! All new technologies require some kind of training before you can use them capably on your own. Here you will find a complete set of lessons that briefly describe the main topics you need to know to start your Data Virtualization project. To get started, please download the sample data sources included in the Tutorial Files, as we will be using them throughout the tutorials to demonstrate the features of the Denodo Data Virtualization software.
Problem to solve
First you have to stop and understand the problem before starting your project. Let's take the following scenario:
- You are working in a company that has information about its customers (CRM) stored in a MySQL database.
- The complete billing information for any customer is exposed in an internal Web Service.
- End users do not want to use different applications to get available information of customers (CRM, Sales Application, etc.).
- The IT department does not like the idea of creating a specific application for this business need and it would like to reuse this customer global view, if possible, in any other current application.
We said in the previous paragraph: "End users do not want to use different applications to get all the information of customers", so the problem here is to connect disparate data to create a single view of the customers, and the IT deparment wants that single view to be reusable.
If you follow a bad design (not reusing components, creating ad-hoc code/applications, etc.) your systems will grow as in the image below. This is a typical example of exactly what you do not want:
Why data virtualization?
Data virtualization creates a single virtual layer that connects disparate data and provides unified access for consuming applications. These applications will use the semantic components defined in the virtual layer and reuse them as needed. In this way, your applications will be independent from the physical sources where the data is stored.
At the end of this Tutorial you will learn that the Denodo Platform provides:
- Easy to generate data services.
- Data Services independent of the physical source(s).
- A single point to control your data sources.
- Short and Agile development cycles.
- Little to no coding!
- Intuitive solutions to simple needs.
- Reusabilty of your models by all clients
Before starting this tutorial, make sure you have all the necessary materials by checking the Installation & Bootstrapping section.
If you have already installed all the components, please go ahead to the First Steps section.