"Data access to a variety of data stores, using consistent rules and definitions that enable all the data stores to be treated as a single resource." (Judith Hurwitz et al, "Service Oriented Architecture For Dummies 2nd Ed.", 2009)
"Technology that joins data from different sources, operational or analytic, around an organization. Data federation allows users to have a single view of disparate data without having to understand the details of the individual data sources." (Tony Fisher, "The Data Asset", 2009)
"A method of transparently joining or linking data from multiple physical locations and/or multiple platforms." (DAMA International, "The DAMA Dictionary of Data Management", 2011)
"Data access to a variety of data stores, using consistent rules and definitions that enable all the data stores to be treated as a single resource." (Marcia Kaufman et al, "Big Data For Dummies", 2013)
"A data federation is a software process that allows multiple databases to function as one. This virtual database takes data from a range of sources and converts them all to a common model. This provides a single source of data for front-end applications." (Tibco [source])
"Data federation is a data integration technique that provides a unified view of data from disparate sources without requiring physical data movement or consolidation." (DataCamp [source])
"Data federation is a data management technique that creates a virtual, unified view of disparate data sources without moving data. Instead of copying data into a centralized repository like a data warehouse, the federation layer sits on top of your existing systems and queries them directly. Disconnected data sources can often lead to silos, but federation solves this issue without requiring a full-scale data integration project." (Fivetran [source])
"Data federation is a powerful data management strategy that enables seamless integration and efficient utilization of disparate data sources. In this approach, we don’t consolidate information or eliminate other sources; instead, we leave the data where it resides and use virtualization techniques to provide a unified view." (SAP [source])
"Data Federation is a strategy that separates compute from storage. When you use Data Federation, you associate data from multiple physical sources into a single virtual source of data for your applications. This enables you to query your data from a single endpoint without physically copying or moving it." (MongoDB [source])
"Data federation is a technique that allows integration, unification, and governance of data that is stored in different data stores by using a federated query engine that translates a single query into subqueries that are shipped to the source data stores." (Oracle [source])
"Data federation is an architectural implementation in which the storage functionality (e.g. create, read, update and delete, also known as CRUD) for an application is delegated to a remote data repository which manages the storage and responds to data usage instructions from the application." (DataBee [source])
"Data federation is the process of aggregating data from different sources into a virtual database." (SAP Community [source])
"Data federation technology is software that provides an organization with the ability to aggregate data from disparate sources in a virtual database so it can be used for business intelligence (BI) or other analysis." (Techtarget)
"Process where data is collected from distinct databases without ever copying or transforming the original data." (Solutions Review)
