Introduction to WebSphere Federation Server

WebSphere^® Federation Server allows organizations to virtualize their data and provide information in a form that applications and users need while hiding the complexity of the underlying sources. Data virtualization allows information to be accessed through a common interface that centralizes the control of data access.

Federation is also known as enterprise information integration. It provides an optimized and transparent data access and transformation layer with a single relational interface across all enterprise data.

With a federated system, you can send distributed requests to multiple data sources within a single SQL statement. For example, you can join data that is in a DB2^® table, an Oracle table, a Web service, and an XML tagged file in a single SQL statement.

The following figure shows a sample of the data sources that you can access when you combine WebSphere Federation Server with WebSphere Classic Federation.

Figure 1. Components of a federated system and sample of data sources

WebSphere Federation Server leverages the metadata of sources systems to automate the building and compiling of federated queries. Metadata also enables traceability and auditability throughout the federation process. Federated queries can easily scale to run against any volume of information by leveraging IBM^® Information Server’s powerful parallel processing engine.

You can deploy federation logic as real-time services within a SOA, as event-driven processes triggered by business events, or on-demand within self-service portals.

A federated system has the following abilities:

Correlate data from local tables and remote data sources, as if all the data is stored locally in the federated database
Update data in relational data sources, as if the data is stored in the federated database
Move data to and from relational data sources
Use data source processing strengths by sending requests to the data sources for processing
Compensate for SQL limitations at the data source by processing parts of a distributed request at the federated server
Access data anywhere in your enterprise, regardless of what format it is in or what vendor you use, without creating new databases and without disruptive changes to existing ones, by using standard SQL and any tool that supports JDBC or ODBC.

WebSphere Federation Server delivers all of these core federation capabilities, plus the following features:

Visual tools for federated data discovery and data modeling
Industry-leading query optimization with single sign-on, unified views, and function compensation
Federated two-phase commit for updating multiple data sources simultaneously within a distributed system, while maintaining data integrity across distributed sources
Remote stored procedures to avoid unnecessary development costs by leveraging previously developed procedures within heterogeneous data sources
Extensive set of features for enforcing secure access to Federated data

Scenarios for data federation

The following scenarios show how organizations use WebSphere Federation Server to solve their integration needs.

Financial services: Risk management: A major European bank wanted to improve risk management across its member institutions and meet deadlines for Basel II compliance. The bank had different methods of measuring risk among its members.
The solution is a database management system that stores a historical view of data, handles large volumes of information, and distributes data in a format that enables analysis and reporting. WebSphere Federation Server enables reporting systems to view data in operational systems that are spread across the enterprise, including vendor information. Risk-calculation engines and analytical tools in the IBM solution provide fast and reliable access to data. The new solution will enable compliance with Basel II that uses a single mechanism to measure risk.
Manufacturing: defect tracking: A major automobile manufacturer needed to quickly identify and remedy defects in its cars. Traditional methods, such as data queries or reporting, were too complex and too slow to pinpoint the sources of problems.
By installing WebSphere Federation Server, the company was able to quickly and easily identify and fix defects by mining data from multiple databases that store warranty information and correlating warranty reports with individual components or software in its vehicles.
Government: emergency response: An agriculture department in a U.S. state needed to eliminate storage of redundant contact information and simplify maintenance. The department had very limited resource for any improvements (one DBA and a manager).
The department chose WebSphere Federation Server for its emergency response system. WebSphere Federation Server joins employee contact information in a human resources database on Oracle with information about employee skills in a DB2 database. The information is presented to emergency personnel through a portal that is implemented with WebSphere Application Server. The small staff was able to accomplish this project because all they needed to learn to use federation was SQL.