Advantages of iBase feature layers
You can configure an iBase database so that it serves simultaneously as a source of feature layers to Esri, and an external data source in Analyst's Notebook. In this configuration, the association of items on maps and charts with information in iBase is retained when you send items in any direction.
In most circumstances, when you send features from an Esri map to an Analyst's Notebook chart, the connection with the server that supplied those features is broken. The chart items contain data from the source, but you cannot go back and expand those items against the source, for example.
The situation changes when the server that supplied the features is also an iBase server. If Analyst's Notebook has an open connection to the server, then when you send the features to Analyst's Notebook, the connection is not lost. Instead, the items behave exactly as if you charted them directly from iBase.