Overview

This document describes two high-level approaches to integrating "external" data with SSP.

The contracts for the default SSP database-local views and tables are linked to as child pages from here.

Option 1: ETL

Transform and load data from arbitrary authoritative datasources into physical tables local to the SSP database. The ETL itself could be evented or batched, but at this writing is always a purely custom development effort. I.e. OOTB SSP has no support for importing flat files or other data feeds.

Data visible to SSP is only as up-to-date as the ETL process.

This approach is generally the more performant of available options and has been the approach chosen by all known SSP pilot and production installations.

Option 2: Remote Relational

Redefine the relational views in the SSP database to query data in external datasources on a just-in-time basis.

Avoids duplication of authoritative data and ensures SSP always sees up-to-date data. Obviously depends on direct database-to-database connectivity.

The one attempt at this approach in a pilot install of the Java SSP implementation was non-performant (5s+ to load a user) and abandoned. Actual performance is of course dependent on any number of implementation-specific details.