$(table).DataTable().data() is an empty object

Hi all,
I have a table with 1 visible row, working well.

At some point I want to run some script to access the table's data, so I call:
var rows = $(table).DataTable().data()
console.log(rows)

this outputs:
Object {}

Here is how the table is initialized:

$(table).dataTable( {
"sDom": "Tfrtip",
"aaData": [
{
"name": "xxx",
"link": "yyyy"
}
],
});

any idea why data() is empty? According to the example, it should contain 1 row in my case.
tnx