In this article I want to show you how easy it is to use the new Avaki perspective and what you can achieve in the areas of Data Federation and Integration. This feature is newly available within Sybase WorkSpace v1.6 and integrated into the Workbench IDE (Integrated Development Environment). What I won't cover in this article is the installation, set-up, and configuration of Avaki and how to create your first Avaki Grid Domain Controller (GDC). This is very well explained within the Avaki documentation.

Data Federation
What is Data Federation? Simply put, it is the combining of data from various data sources into one single virtual data source or Data Service. The data can then be accessed, managed, and viewed as if it were part of a single system. This Data Service can be a combination of files, HTTP requests, Web services, SQL queries (including Stored Procedures), and other Data Services, etc. In my example, we will use the authors ASE 15 Pubs2 database table as our only data source. Simple I know, but let's walk before we can run.

Before we start our example we also need to introduce two concepts: a Database Connector and a Database Operation. The Database Connector is a mechanism that enables one or more database operations to connect to a relational database; a Database Operation is a mechanism that can extract/modify data from/in a relational database and deliver it to a Data Service. Our Federated Data Service will extract data from the authors table and manipulate it by concatenating a few fields together.

WorkSpace and the Avaki Perspective
Note that we will use the Avaki stand-alone JDBC driver, so make sure you copy Avaki_JDBCStandAlone.JAR into C:\Sybase\WorkSpace\DevRuntimes\EAServer\java\lib. This will be used at runtime within EAServer when we call our final Database Service in UO, as well as within WorkSpace to set up a new JDBC driver entry (see Figure 1).

To add a new driver, select the ellipsis button that is displayed next to the driver drop-down list shown in Figure 2. This will allow you to add the new JDBC driver entry (see Figure 1).

We can add a connection profile to the Avaki GDC. This will allow us to see all that we create and use them in WorkSpace just like any other Data Source, for example, in the Enterprise Explorer (see Figures 2 and 3). This will become very useful once we have created our Avaki Data Service.

Once the Avaki perspective is opened, we can use the File|New options (see Figure 4) to create a Database connector to our ASE 15 Pubs2 Database (see Figure 5). This will allow us to see all the tables in the Data Catalog View and even create a SQL View immediately. Now for our database operation, which is a straight SQL SELECT of all the columns from the authors table (see Figure 6) but using a WHERE clause on the au_lname column. As before, the Database Operation will appear in the Data Catalog View, very useful for our next step.

The next step is to create a new Avaki View Model, which will display a Palette and a canvas for us to drag and drop our newly created authors Data Operation, from the Data Catalog View (see Figure 7) onto the canvas and a Result object will be created automatically. Now drop a Projection onto the canvas and wire up the Data Operation, Projection, and Result with a connection, in that order.

Finally, change the Projection properties to combine some of the columns into single values (see Figure 8). Now that we have created our Data Service Model view, right-click on the canvas and test it with the Execute Model menu option; if it gives us the correct result, right-click on the canvas and take the Deploy option (see Figure 9).

True SOA and Integration Power
We can now switch to the Service Perspective and browse the Avaki Connection Profile for the Data Service we just created.

• Question: How do we create this as a Database Service so it can be used in a Business Process Orchestration in UO?
• Answer: Just like any other data source, right-click and take the Create Database Service menu option (see Figure 10). WorkSpace will take care of all of the code generation.

Now that we know everything is working as we designed it, we can use the Database Service with a Business Process Orchestration. That's true SOA and Integration Power, and all from within the same IDE...seamless.