The BEA AquaLogic Data Services Platform provides a service-based abstraction layer that operates between an organization's data sources and the client applications that need to access data from those sources. It allows developers to model and create reusable data services via drag and drop GUI tools that can access those sources, and in turn can themselves be accessed by client applications; providing for the consuming clients a consistent interface for the access of data from multiple sources.

The data services are created by developers using a metadata-driven process called "Declarative Programming." This process, according to the vendor, allows the developers to define the metadata defining both the services they want as well as the data sources those services are based on; with the platform then automatically providing the data access methodology--including ordering of data source accesses, orchestration of service calls, and generation of SQL queries--as necessary for the execution of the data service. The vendor further states that generated SQL queries, when used, are automatically constructed so as to delegate as much of the query processing to the back-end data source as possible.

Both SQL and XQuery are spoken natively by the platform; facilitating the collection, mapping, and transformation of data into XML documents as well as providing the ability to expose virtual DB interfaces via JDBC and/or ODBC. On the back end, multiple data sources are supported for data retrieval including relational DBs such as Oracle, Sybase, SQL Server, Informix, and DB2; packaged apps (Peoplesoft, SAP and Siebel); custom applications; files; Web services and XML-based sources. An Excel Add-in is also offered.

Both read and write access is provided to the data sources; the latter facilitated via automated procedures that handle such issues as concurrency management and transactional updates to XI-compliant sources (including support for two-phase commits). Data caching is also supported by the platform.

Other platform features include the ability to publish data services as Web services or integrate them with the vendor's BEA AquaLogic Service Bus; integration with the vendor's BEA WebLogic Workshop for round trip visual modeling; and support for course or fine grain data access security controls, including the ability to limit data access at the data services function, data element, or actual data content level; the latter allowing for the creation of rules restricting access based on the actual contents of a data cell.

New features of the forthcoming product update (due to be available in early 2008) include support for Eclipse-based modeling and enhanced data update capabilities.

Contact BEA Systems for further information.