Data Services layer is an abstraction layer which can provide data to multiple consumers and is usually deployed at an enterprise-wide scale. Data Virtualization software has the ability to easily create new Data Services using the views in the virtual layer. In many projects, it's necessary to have a common, consistent and scalable data services infrastructure.
What are the most common issues providing these services?
- Complex architectures where the integration of different systems becomes a difficult and tedious task.
- Rigid infrastructure that hinders the launching of new services quickly to the demands of its customers.
- Overdependence on the IT department.
So, what are the benefits of having a Data Services layer?
- A single data layer for accessing all the information for every business application.
- Many problems solved by using only the Data Services layer only.
- Access to any source as if they were homogeneous.
- Simple plugins to ESB software.
Let's suppose the following scenario:
Another department has an application that connects to the company's CRM using a specific Web service (developed only for this purpose), but now they want to use the Data Virtualization infrastructure to also get the unified customer data (to avoid connecting to the physical source systems). They have to migrate their application to point to another Web service with similar operations as the previous one but with more output fields.
Two actions have to be done:
- On the Denodo side, a new Web service has to be deployed.
- On the consuming application side, they have to point to the new service.
Along withat that setup, for the development team, it would be useful to have a contract to make the changes in the application at the same time as the Denodo Data Virtualization Layer (without this contract they have to redeploy after the new Web service is ready). In this example, the contract will be the WSDL of a Web service without implementation in Denodo and, in the next section, you will learn how to create an interface element that are very useful for these kind of projects.
With this situation in mind, in this tutorial we will use Denodo to learn how to: