Universal Data Access (UDA)
Modern data-intensive applications require the integration of information stored not only in traditional database management systems, but also in file systems, indexed-sequential files, desktop databases, spreadsheets, project management tools, electronic mail, directory services, multimedia data stores, spatial data stores, and more. Several database companies are pursuing a traditional database-centric approach, referred to as the universal database. In this approach, the database vendor extends the database engine and programming interface to support new data types, including text, spatial, video, and audio. The vendor requires customers to move all data needed by the application, which can be distributed in diverse sources across a corporation, into the vendor's database system. This process can be expensive and wasteful.
Universal Data Access (UDA) is an effective alternate approach to the universal database approach. However, it also can be implemented as a complementary approach and used with the universal database approach. The premise of Universal Data Access is to allow applications to efficiently access data where it resides without replication, transformation, or conversion. Open interfaces allow connectivity among all data sources. Independent services provide for distributed queries, caching, update, data marshaling, distributed transactions, and content indexing among sources.