What Is Data Federation?

This article will explain what data federation is, why it is used, and some of its benefits and challenges. Read more here.

Brody Hall
By Brody Hall
Joel Taylor
Edited by Joel Taylor

Published March 25, 2022.

Data federation is a technique used to improve the performance of distributed systems by allowing them to share data easily. It does this by creating a single global view of the data, which is then used to coordinate the activities of the different systems. This makes it possible for them to work together as if they were a single system—referred to as a data warehouse—despite being spread across different locations.

What Is the Purpose of Data Federation?

The purpose of data federation is to allow multiple databases to be accessed as if they were one. This is done by creating a virtual view of the data stores, which is then used to access the data. Federation data models allow information to be accessed in a single query, regardless of where the data is stored. It also allows data to be cached locally, which can improve performance.

Benefits of Data Federation

  • Data federation can make it easier to find the information you need.
  • It can make it easier to combine data from different sources.
  • Data federation layers can make it easier to perform complex queries on the data.
  • It can help improve performance by reducing the amount of data that needs to be transferred between servers.

Challenges of Data Federation

  • The data is often spread out across different databases and data stores, which can make it difficult to gather and consolidate.
  • Another challenge of federated software is that the data is often in different formats, so it needs to be converted into a common format before it can be used.
  • It can be difficult to ensure that the data is consistent and accurate across all of the different sources.