sqlConnect provides reusable, secure, real-time read/write access to multiple heterogeneous databases as if they were one database. With sqlConnect, a single metadata model can be created that spans all enterprise data sources and applications requiring data access. The result is a single enterprise-wide data service to deploy out to your SOA. Connect all your data , mainframe (IMS, CICS) or midrange (DEC, VAX, AS400, …) across all data sources (DB2, VSAM, IMS, DBMS, …) into one logical data service for information access.

sqlConnect has a distributed SQL engine, meaning that the work of processing queries is distributed between the application servers and the host data server. By fully leveraging your J2EE SOA distributed architecture, overall costs are minimized by offloading direct data access integration services to the middle tier. Most of the CPU-intensive query processing, such as data conversion and sorting, is performed on the application server. All of the data retrieval is performed on the host data server.

This distributed architecture has several advantages:

• When performing joins, significantly less data is sent across the network because no duplicates are transmitted.
• The workload on the data server is minimal, because CPU-bound tasks are moved to the client, resulting in a reduction of load on the data server and better performance across the enterprise.