An intelligent system for identifying and integrating non-local objects in federated database systems

Support for interoperability among autonomous, heterogeneous database systems is emerging as a key information management problem for the 1990s. A key challenge for achieving interoperability among multiple database systems is to provide capabilities to allow information units and resources to be flexibly and dynamically combined and interconnected while at the same time, preserve the investment in and autonomy of each existing system. This research specifically focuses on two key aspects of this: (1) how to discover the location and content of relevant, non-local information units, and (2) how to identify and resolve the semantic heterogeneity that exists between related information in different database components. We demonstrate and evaluate our approach using the remote-exchange experimental prototype system, which supports information sharing and exchange from the above perspective.<>