Data Fabric connectors: What they are and why you need them

Integrating data from multiple systems is just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to building powerful applications. The real challenge lies in how you handle, query, and extend that data to make it actionable and easy to present to your end users. That’s why OutSystems Data Fabric doesn’t just connect your systems—it transforms data interaction. The result is a seamless, intuitive, and efficient experience for managing, combining, and leveraging data from multiple sources.

To simplify data integration, OutSystems Data Fabric provides a library of pre-built connectors. These connectors allow your apps to integrate with external databases and systems, eliminating the typical headaches of manual integration. By abstracting this complexity, Data Fabric lets your team focus on what truly matters—building apps and delivering value faster. In this blog, I provide a deep dive into Data Fabric connectors, their benefits, and use cases. But first, here’s a brief review of Data Fabric and the challenges it addresses (for a more complete overview, check out my Data Fabric introductory blog article).

The challenges of managing and leveraging disparate data

Handling data from various systems isn't just about setting up connections. You also need to manage different data formats, ensure seamless data manipulation, and maintain consistency and governance across your entire data landscape. Businesses often struggle with:

• Data silos: Data is scattered across departments, making it hard to access, combine, or gain insights.
• Complex data queries: Manually combining data from multiple sources requires intricate queries and custom logic, which slows down development.
• Security and compliance: Ensuring consistent governance when dealing with sensitive data across various systems can be a challenge.

Data Fabric integrates these systems. More importantly, it also provides the tools to combine, manipulate, and make sense of data, all delivered in a user-friendly format that your teams can act on immediately. Data Fabric connectors are a specific part of Data Fabric, one we’ve been continuously beefing up for the past few months.

What are the data connectors in Data Fabric?

Data connectors in Data Fabric are essentially pre-built bridges that simplify integration between systems. Instead of developers spending weeks building and maintaining custom APIs, these connectors do the heavy lifting. Here’s how it works:

1. Administrators (admins) establish connections to the supported databases or systems and select the necessary data entities.
2. Developers can then access and use those entities directly in their OutSystems development environments, just like any native data.

Once set up, these connections can be reused across your entire app portfolio, so your developers can access the data anytime without having to configure new connections.

How Data Fabric connectors work

With Data Fabric connectors, admins can establish secure, reusable connections to multiple systems. From there, developers can interact with the data as if it were stored locally in the OutSystems platform. For example, if your customer relationship management (CRM) system stores customer information and your ERP tracks orders, you can use Data Fabric to pull both sets of data into a single view for a sales app—without creating new APIs or manually integrating each system.

The process is simple:

1. Admins authenticate and connect the necessary systems using Data Fabric.
2. Developers access the data entities in the OutSystems environment.
3. The data is now centralized and available for any app, ensuring up-to-date, consistent information across departments.

Supported systems and connectors

As of 2024, OutSystems Data Fabric supports a growing list of systems, including:

• SQL Server
• Oracle
• Salesforce
• SAP OData
• SAP BAPI
• PostgreSQL
• MySQL (Coming Soon)
• IBM DB2 (Coming Soon)
• Snowflake (Coming Soon)

As you can clearly see, it doesn’t matter what systems you're using, because Data Fabric can easily integrate with them.

Unlocking the power of Data Mashup

One of the most valuable features that complements Data Fabric’s connectors is Data Mashup. This capability allows you to combine data from various sources—internal systems, external databases, or cloud services—into a unified dataset.

Data Mashup simplifies how you aggregate and use data. No more writing complex queries or manually pulling data from multiple systems. Instead, you can bring together customer data from your CRM, order data from your ERP, and support data from your helpdesk into one place, with just a few clicks.

The result is a more efficient and flexible way to work with data, allowing development teams to focus on building innovative apps powered by rich, cross-system data, without worrying about managing complex backend integrations.

Use case: Streamlining sales data integration

Imagine a sales team that needs to pull data from a CRM, warehouse management, and financial systems. Without Data Fabric, developers would need to write custom code, create and maintain API connections, and ensure data consistency across all sources.

With the data connectors from Data Fabric, the process is much simpler. Admins set up the connections to the systems, and developers then pull in and combine the necessary data in a sales app. This gives the sales team a 360-degree view of customer info, orders, and financials in one place, saving developers weeks of manual integration work.

The future of Data Fabric connectors

We're constantly expanding the number of systems that Data Fabric supports. As your tech stack evolves, Data Fabric will evolve with it. In the coming years, expect even more connectors for cloud-based services, SaaS applications, and emerging technologies, making data integration as simple and powerful as ever.

Why you need Data Fabric connectors

Data Fabric connectors make integrating external data into your apps faster, simpler, and more scalable. By eliminating the complexity of setting up and maintaining manual connections, your developers can focus on what matters: creating innovative, data-driven applications. Whether connecting to a legacy database, a SaaS platform, or cloud-based services, Data Fabric ensures that your data is ready to use across your organization—without the usual integration headaches.

To learn more about Data Fabric connectors, visit the OutSystems evaluation guide.