A remote cooperation system supporting interoperability in heterogeneous environments

Federated database systems are heterogeneous with respect to data models and query languages but also with respect to underlying operating systems and hardware platforms. Besides transformations on the semantics level conversions on the data representation and communication protocol level have to be done. The authors present the Remote Cooperation System RCS which provides client/server communication procedures independent of hardware and operating system aspects. Thus, the configuration of a system may change without affecting the participating databases and application tools. The RCS allows for asynchronous service invocation, thus enabling the simultaneous querying of several databases by one application. Furthermore, it supports multi-tasking of server processes and the element-wise transfer of results. Monitoring tools allow the assessment of several choices in system configuration and access algorithms embodied in the application processes