Chapter 3 Building Information Liquidity Diagrams

Data Connections (ILM)

A data connection is a relationship that specifies the way data are copied between:

A database and a replication process - to replicate data from a database to another.
A data store (database, XML document, business process, and flat file) and a transformation process – to model data inputs and outputs in the modeling of data transformations. For more information about data transformations, see the Building Data Transformation Diagrams chapter.
Two data stores with associated models – to show the way data are mapped between models.

The way you draw a data connection determines its direction, and the way objects at its extremities use the data:

Type	Description
Read-only	The replication process reads only (extracts) data from the database.
Write-only	The replication process writes only (consolidates) the data in the database.
Read/Write:	The replication process reads and writes data from and in the database.