IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Welcome to the Data Virtualization as a service beta

Data Virtualization as a service delivers the ability to view, access, manipulate, and analyze data without the need to know or understand its physical format or location, and without having to move or copy it.

Overview

Get started by provisioning an instance of Data Virtualization from the Services catalog in IBM® Cloud Pak for Data. For more information, see Getting started with Data Virtualization. The following conditions apply to this beta.

You can select only the Dallas (us-south) location.
You can choose the Enterprise plan only (Free).
Your Data Virtualization instance will be deleted after the beta.
Objects that are created in the beta cannot be transferred to a production instance.
You must be logged in to Cloud Pak for Data with an IBMid that is a member of the closed beta to view the Data Virtualization beta documentation.

Features of Data Virtualization as a service

Data Virtualization as a service is available as an on-demand licensing and delivery model with the following features:

Data Virtualization as a service is a fully managed service on IBM Cloud that you can use to easily and securely access data across many data sources.
You can create virtual objects, manage data source connections, virtualize data, and join virtual tables and views. For more information, see Creating virtual objects.
You can manage access to objects with defined Manager, Steward, Engineer, and User roles. For more information, see Managing users and roles (Data Virtualization).
You can enable personal credentials in Cloud Pak for Data on IBM Cloud in Administration > Account settings so that they can be used when you create connections. For more information, see User credentials and supported authentication methods.
You can monitor and explore Data Virtualization as a service through the console that is provided by Cloud Pak for Data. For more information, see Managing Cloud Pak for Data as a Service and core services and Monitoring and exploring Data Virtualization.

Supported data sources

Data Virtualization as a service supports many relational and non-relational data sources that you can access from either the public internet or by using a private endpoint on IBM Cloud. The following data sources are verified.

Db2 on Cloud
Db2 Warehouse on Cloud
PostgreSQL on Cloud
MongoDB on Cloud
Netezza® on Cloud
Snowflake
Oracle on-premises
IBM Data Virtualization Manager for z/OS®

For more information, see Adding data sources (Data Virtualization).

Known issues and limitations

The following issues and limitations apply to the Data Virtualization as a service beta:

Governing data

Governing data, which includes creating connections in Watson™ Knowledge Catalog, virtualizing data with business terms, enforcing business terms, publishing virtual data to the catalog, data protection rules, and masking virtual data, is not supported.
Publishing data to data science notebooks in Watson Studio is not supported.

Managing caches

Managing data caches to save data results, view, search, or filter queries is not supported.

Data sources

Adding a data source from an existing connection is not supported.
Accessing remote data sources is not supported.
Connecting to an unsupported data source by creating a Generic JDBC connection is not supported.

Virtualizing data

The data request workflow is not supported.
Creating virtualized tables from files, such as CSV, TSV, and Excel files, is not supported.

Connections

You cannot create a connection to a Data Virtualization service from the Platform connections page.
If you add a service level data source connection on the Data Virtualization > Data sources page, that connection also appears on the Platform connections page. Later, if you click Remove to delete the service level connection, the connection remains on the Platform connections page. You must manually remove the connection from the Platform connections page to completely remove the data source connection.
If you add a service level data source connection on the Data Virtualization > Data sources page, you must update the connection from the same place. Any updates that are made to the connection on the Platform connections are not reflected in the service level connection.

Users, roles, and access control

You cannot change a user's role on Data > Data Virtualization > User management during the beta.
You cannot manage the visibility of virtual objects to allow Data Virtualization users to view virtual objects that they cannot access.
Enforcing data protection rules in Watson Knowledge Catalog (policy enforcement) and enabling strict mode to enforce the user of business terms are not supported.

Monitoring

The Database partitions page and all of its contents are not available from Data > Data Virtualization > Monitor dashboard > Database partitions. The Partition skew, Partition summary, and Database partitions information is not available.
The Settings page and all of its tabs are not available from Data > Data Virtualization > Monitor dashboard > Settings. The General, Scaling, Scaling history, and Maintenance tabs are not supported.