Deep Dive into Common Data Services - PowerApps

Introduction 

 

Since ancient times, communication among communities has been an eminent part of culture. To have more detailed and more groomed information about things, and as humankind evolved and events started taking place, much energy was required to be invested in this process.

 

Now we live in the era of Information and Technology, where we need to share and interact with different systems or cross-domain applications to have better insights. For example, let’s say in a company we have two different cross-domain applications, one is an Employee Management application, and the other is a Finance Management Application. We need to have a third system that needs data input from both of these, so now we invested a larger part of our energy and money paving out this integration and interaction among the applications.

 

Microsoft introduced the Common Data Service, backed by the Common Data Model which can be viewed as a Database with capabilities to store and process any data type, including int, string, blob, etc. It has an easy-to-use and configurable user interface, with almost 300+ connectors to pull and push the data from applications across the globe, including both Microsoft Applications as well as applications from other companies.

 

 

Advantages of the Common Data Model

 

Let’s say we need to create an application which will be storing three entirely different sets of data..

• String
• Image
• Attachment

Now, conventionally if we want to develop the same info and store it in Azure, then we need to have three different data storages including:

• Relational Database
• Non Relational Database
• Blog to store the attachments 

Common Data Model 

 

 

The Common Data Model is basically a foundation that stores the data in the Azure database and on top of it is the Common Data Service which offers us the functionality to push and pull the data. Data in Common Data Service is stored within a set of standard and custom entities of fields which are synchronized between the applications in the same environment.

 

The Common Data Model allows us to integrate and share the data between the application without any extensive traditional codes. It also offers a centralized point where the system can come together and connect and bridge the gap between the repositories of information once divided by the digital language barrier.

 

The Common Data Service comes up with multiple connectors that are well integrated with each other and not limited to Microsoft products only. It offers connectors that provide seamless integration with applications, including Salesforce, mail chimps, etc.

 

Benefits of Common Data Service

 

• It gives a free hand and easy way to work with any datatype while building an app without any worries about the storage of different data types being used, including images, strings, and other types of content
• It has been built from the perspective of a citizen rather than a developer, so it enables a layman to create any data types without any worries.
• Common Data service offers users a common space where they can store collective data from all the apps and then perform transformations over it to meet the expected results in the business apps.
• Common Data Service offers an easy to manage user interface which helps in managing the content, data, and data type
• Common Data Service has Role-Based Security which allows and assists us in controlling access to entities and data based upon the roles of users in the organization.
• Logic and Validations which have been applied over applications are also applied over entities in the Common Data Service to maintain validation across the application.