(1) A repository of data to which a federated server can connect and then retrieve data by using wrappers. A data source can contain relational databases, XML files, search algorithms, table-structured files, or other objects. In a federated system, data sources appear as a single collective database. See also foreign server.
(2) In JDBC, an interface that provides a logical representation of a pool of connections to a physical data source. Data source objects provide application portability by making it unnecessary to supply information specific to a particular database driver.
(3) The means by which an application accesses data from a database.