foundations of information integration louiqa raschid smith school of business, department of c.s....

Foundations of Information Integration

Louiqa Raschid

Smith School of Business, Department of C.S.

and UMIACS

Vladimir Zadorozhny

UMIACS

University of Maryland

Presentation to JRSA - June 15, 1999

Preliminary Observations

Information integration is pushing the state-of-the-art of current practice.

Roadblocks to success will be inherent to the organization rather than technology limitations.


Dimensions of Interoperability(initial)

• Platform (machine and O/S)• Programming Language• Application Semantics• Database Model• Query Language• Database Schema• Database Semantics


Technology Solutions and Interoperability Dimensions

• Middleware • Focus on platform, language, application semantics.

• Database Gateways, MultiDBMS, Heterogeneous DBMS • Focus on database integration, database query processing.

• Data Warehouses• Focus on management decision support.

• Workflow Management

NONE OF the solutions address DATABASE SEMANTICS.

Additional dimensions: Multi-media (full text, images, video)


Middleware

Middleware allows an application to interoperate with other software.

Eliminates the need to understand and code different implementation details with different levels of implementation transparency.


CORBA approach

PL neutral “contract language” OMG IDL IDL/PL compiler based on standard Object Request Broker (ORB)

architecture ensuring “common address space” and “common data format”. ORB is a standard middleware that may have specific implementations in

different environments Iona Orbix, BEA ObjectBroker


Transaction processing middleware

Facilitates and makes efficient data requests between application and DBMS DB system may require an entire OS process per

connected user, which is not scalable Establishing a connection is slow. With many users

system performance degrades IBM CICS, BEA Tuxedo


Database Gateways, Multi-DBMS, Heterogeneous DBMS

Transparent access to multiple physical DBMS Typically transparent to platform and DBMS product Provides Logical Database Integration, i.e.,

transparent support of SQL queries over multiple DBMS

Support joins, unions, views over multiple DBMS Example products

IBM DataJoiner, Informix Enterprise Gateway Manager


Enterprise-wide Data Warehouses Provides uniform access to snapshots of multiple

legacy data sources or DBMS. Create and populate warehouse tables. Typically does not provide Logical Database

Integration, i.e., transparent support of SQL queries over multiple underlying heterogeneous DBMS.

Support for data-marts and datacubes w.r.t. warehouse tables for management decision support.

OLAP (offline decision support) versus OLTP (real-time application).


Workflow Management

Focus on business transactions / event management.

May be transparent to platform and DBMS product. Typically does not provide Logical Database

Integration i.e., transparent support of SQL queries over multiple heterogeneous DBMS.

Example products Staffware JetForm


Useful Links

A general product overview site of more then 900 products (formerly DBMS Buyer’s Guide): http://www.iemagazine.com/pguide_frm.shtml

Comprehensive technology guides and articles: http://www.techguide.com http://www.intelligententerprise.com/archives.shtml

A comprehensive guide to Workflow Management: http://www.concordium.co.uk

foundations of information integration louiqa raschid smith school of business, department of c.s....

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