As the scope of our information systems grows, they have to cope with
increasing heterogeneity. When information comes from remote, autonomous sources, the control over consistency that is required to achieve effective production of information in traditional systems is lost.
Heterogeneity exists at many levels. Data from different sources is
structured differently (say object versus relational), has differences in the extent of detail (say monthly budget versus weekly personnel
assignments), scope (all purchases versus inventory items), and semantics (differences in naming and ontology).
The objectives of research in mediation is to improve the integration of heterogeneous data and to provide aid with the search for relevant data, combine data derived from multiple heterogeneous sources, and process the results to create real information for the user.
This talk will provide an overview of the current state of the art, and point out where more research is required. More information can be found on the web pages under http://www-db.stanford.edu/.
Gio Wiederhold is Professor of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Medicine at Stanford University and is a world-renowned expert on information integration and among the founders of this field. He has authored over 300 scientific publications and is currently on sabbatical at EPFL, Lausanne.
