Updated: July 16, 2020 (October 30, 2017)

  Analyst Report

Common Data Service for Hosted Services

My Atlas / Analyst Reports

1,124 wordsTime to read: 6 min
by
Joshua Trupin

Joshua Trupin was a former Directions on Microsoft Analyst that wrote about Office 365 and Microsoft Services. Before joining Directions... more

The Common Data Service (CDS) is a Microsoft-hosted database service, available through PowerApps, which is designed to make it easier to create and use business data in PowerApps, Flow, Dynamics 365, Office 365, and other applications. The CDS provides standard business data structures and is not as complex to use as other database services, such as Azure SQL Database, but it has limitations on data types and functionality, and its use requires premium PowerApps licensing for users and developers.

Common Data Service

The CDS was introduced in 2016 as part of PowerApps, a graphical application development environment that lets users with limited programming expertise create hosted applications that are shared among other users in Office 365. For example, PowerApps can be used to create line-of-business applications (samples include an employee engagement survey and health plan selector) in conjunction with Microsoft Flow, a graphical workflow automation engine that runs in Azure and is based on the Azure Logic Apps service.

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