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

The query federation aspect of this upgrade eliminates any difficulty for the user when working with related data stored in multiple sources. It allows users to easily join multiple related data elements across an unlimited number of platforms in real time, including cloud applications, RDBMS databases, data warehouses, NoSQL data stores and flat files, according to the company. To take advantage of the full range of this functionality, data sources must be configured in CData Connect as virtual databases.

Derived views allow 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 functionality, combined with the addition of query federation, can help organizations break down how a wide range of data assets are used in data analysis and management. This new feature also provides the user with many other benefits such as simplified access which allows users to easily retrieve commonly used queries, improved security which provides the ability to set permissions on the view and access to complex data in real time.

The added capability of custom schematics allows for greater user customization. This feature also allows you to define custom data models for APIs with a number of different layers. This is easily done by setting your inputs to generate a custom view of your data that you have the flexibility to save and simply reuse as data model templates.