Learning Microsoft Power Apps

Chapter 4. Data Sources and Connectors

Any business application needs a database, also known as a data source, to store the data. OneDrive for Business, Microsoft SQL, Excel, and Oracle are a few examples of frequently used databases. Power Apps uses Microsoft Dataverse to store data and also provides a variety of connectors that enable you to connect to various external data sources. In this chapter, you will learn the fundamentals of Power Apps data sources and connectors, their architecture, and their various types based on Power Apps types.

Introduction to Data Sources and Connectors

Data is the heart of any organization that stores information about its customers and employees. This data is needed by many business applications in your organization to make business decisions. Therefore, it needs to be stored and centralized somewhere so that various business applications can talk to it and perform various transactions like create, read, update, and delete.

The location or database where the business data is kept is referred to as a data source or database, and the channel or link via which that data source communicates with business applications is referred to as a connection. This connection between your business software and the data source is established using an API, which serves as middleware or a bridge and is referred to as a connector (see Figure 4-1).

Let’s understand this using the LinkedIn app as an example. LinkedIn is a business- and employment-focused social ...