Federated systems

A federated system is a collection of databases, spreadsheets, and flat files from different database management systems.

For example, your organization might use different database management systems, such as Sybase, Informix, and Oracle to store critical data. A federated database provides a unified interface to diverse data. The federated database accesses the data through a software component known as a wrapper. A new data type is accessed by acquiring or creating a wrapper for that source. After a wrapper is defined, you can use simple data definition (DDL) statements to dynamically add the data to the federated system without stopping ongoing queries or transactions.

When a database connection is made, relational database tools determine whether the database is federated. If a database contains federated tables, then the database is also federated.

Federated database table nicknames are displayed in the Data Definition view under the Aliases folder. They are also displayed in the table editor. Only the base tables are fully supported. From the Data Definition view, you can open, edit, copy, cut, paste, delete, and rename a base table. You can also generate the DDL statements and export the base table to a server. In the Data Definition view, you can only browse a system table in the table editor and generate the DDL statements.

 

Parent topic

Defining a database

 

Related tasks

Defining a database
Creating a table nickname