Instance Data Tables

Instance data tables contain the actual data that a customer inputs. Examples include a customer’s financial information year to year, summary information about a portfolio, and a task plan for an individual project. In many cases, instance data is stored within a binary field of a particular table. This is part of the flexible architecture that allows the customer to interact with and affect large amounts of data in real time as well as have the ability to configure his system in any way imaginable without having to wait for a processing job to occur overnight or dynamically changing the schema of the database.

Retrieving instance data out the application requires the use of the data access component, also referred to as data services. In addition to accessing data, using the data access component allows for the application of business logic such as dynamically changing the layout of financial data, enforcement of user security, and prevents any unauthorized writing to the tables outside of the application.