CData this week announced the release of the newest update to its data connectivity platform: CData Connect 2021. According to CData, the upgrades made to the platform include such new features as query federation, custom schemas, and derived views. These added tools are designed to improve the ways organizations relate to and connect with data.  

The query federation aspect of this upgrade rids the user of any difficulty while working with related data stored in multiple sources. It allows users to easily join multiple different pieces of related data across any number of platforms in real-time, including cloud applications, RDBMS databases, data warehouses, NoSQL data stores, and flat files, according to the company. To experience the full range of this feature, the data sources must be configured within CData Connect as virtual databases. 

Derived views allows the user to define “virtual tables” or save  complex SQL queries as ‘Derived Views’ that can be queried on-demand, the company said in its announcement. According to CData, this feature — combined with the addition of query federation —  can help organizations break down how a wide range of data assets are used across analytics and data management. This new feature also provides the user with numerous other benefits such as simplified access that allows users to easily retrieve commonly used queries, improved security that offers the ability to set the permissions on the view, and access to complex, real-time data. 

The added Custom Schemas ability allows for more user personalization. This feature also provides a way to define custom data models for APIs with a number of different layers. This is easily done by defining your inputs to generate a custom view of your data which you have the ability to save and simply reuse as data model templates.