What is the Common Data Service?

The Common Data Service (CDS) is a cloud-based, low-code Data Service AND App Platform. The advantage of this ecosystem that Microsoft has built up is that through the Common Data service, you can leverage the security and connectivity that is embedded in all Microsoft services.

What makes the Common Data Service unique is that it connects to all products and aspects within the Power Platform. This allows you to easily manage your business, automate processes and improve various aspects using the platform. As a data service, CDS supports not only the standard entities and fields that popular data services have, but also provide a simple way to define relationships with your data. So CDS is a rather practical and scalable solution - built to interface multiple products and applications with a strong foundation in data management and relationship building.

Overview of the Common Data Service

The Common Data Service is a cloud-based solution that sorts data from various sources and aligns business logic from different applications. You can imagine CDS as the middle child - the mediator - the shared node that brings together different systems under a common data pool.

The Common Data Service is managed by Microsoft and available for use globally. This means anyone around the world can utilise the Common Data Service in their systems, in conjunction with the Power Platform.

Even more, what is unique is that the CDS is deployed GEOGRAPHICALLY / locally. This is so that the CDS always complies to the local regulations of the user. If you were to use CDS in Germany for example, then the Common Data Service would follow the data policy guidelines that Germany provides (like GDPR or something).

One nuance however, is that the Common Data Service cannot be embedded in your application as a standalone. In other words, to access and utilise CDS, you require an Internet connection to link up with the service and manage your data.

The Common Data Service should serve as the Central Data Repository for all the data within the business - pooling data from different sources and keeping it in one secure location. This powerful tool is already intrinsicly embedded in a lot of Microsoft solutions - including Dynamics 365, Power Apps, Power Automate and AI Builder natively utilising the CDS.

What does the Common Data Service provide?

What the Common Data Service offers natively

Security

The Common Data Service is in charge of managing Authentication for Azure's Active Directory (Azure AAD). This is the Identity Management for Azure that defines the conditions of accessing Azure products as well as rules for multi-factor authentication.

Logic

For Logic, the Common Data Service enforces a consistent logic across your various sets of data. This implies things like applying your business logic on the data such that regardless of how the data is used, the same rules always apply. The benefits of doing so is that the CDS helps to improve your data management regarding things like detecting duplication in data, promoting workflows that utilise this data and more.

Data

For data, the Common Data Service is in responsible for how you can interact with your data. CDS provides you with complete control over your data, helping you to do things like discover, catalogue, report, validate and model your data all under a common data thread. Again, this is to ensure that wherever the data is used and how it is interacted with there is always a level of consistency.

Storage

For storing your data, the Common Data Service utilises the Azure Infrastructure to store your data on the Azure Cloud. This ensures that your data will be kept secure and backed up - such that you need not worry about how to access your data and how you might scale your database. With all this taken care of, you even have the added ability to take advantage of Azure's features when interacting with data. Things like creating relational databases to form relationships with your data, or utilise different modes of storage like blob storage is all brought to the table with the Common Data Service

Integration

Extending upon different data sources, the Common Data Service connects your data in various ways to meet the needs of your business. For example, with external data, you may require an API compared to internal data on your storage which you may need to import or export. Having this selection of options makes it extremely easy to bring data into your database (CDS) and also extract your data.

What you can do with the CDS

Since you can connect your Common Data Service as a shared database to different sources, you can connect your Common Data Service to different cloud-based versions of a standard database. What this standard database provides are things like pre-defined tables and fields filled with things that are common across almost all organisations and businesses. This means that when you create your CDS, a level of work is already automated to set-up the CDS such that you are ready to go from the start. Having this can accelerate you into customising the CDS for your specific use case.

As such, you are free to extend upon the base database and add new tables and fields (or adding ENTITIES as they are referred to in CDS). So making new data entries is essentially creating new entities in CDS. By doing a level of work ahead of time, you can then concentrate on creating a better solution wihout needing to worry about your infrastructure, data storage or integration as that is all covered by CDS.

Once your data is connected using CDS, you can access it different depending on what services you are using CDS with. For Power Apps and Power Automate, it is natively supported such that you can instantly connect and set-up Common Data Service to manage your data. On the other hand, for external business solutions, you can utilise Connectors and APIs to manage and access your data, allowing you to connect to any business solution.