A feature that the code templates bring to OWB is the ability now to make connections natively to other data sources. One of those connection options is the ability to make native connections to remote databases using Java Database Connectivity, or just JDBC for short.
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Code templates are a framework for using arbitrary APIs to connect to any number of alternative data sources. There is a knowledge module in ODI for making a connection to an Essbase database, which can be ported over to use in OWB, and some OWB users have even integrated PDF files into OWB using code templates.
By native connectivity, we mean being able to connect directly to the remote database without having to go through an external gateway and being able to run code directly in the remote database to perform extraction, transforming, and loading. Remember back to Chapter 2 where we went through all those steps to configure a remote connection to an SQL Server...