Experimenting data integration with DIS @ DIS

Abstract

Data integration consists in providing a uniform access to a set of heterogeneous sources through a common representation called global schema. In this paper we present DIS@DIS, a data integration system that adopts innovative techniques for query answering in a complex integration environment. In particular, DIS@DIS is able to deal with integrity constraints, which are used to enhance the expressiveness of the global schema. Since data at the sources may not satisfy the constraints, DIS@DIS is capable of reasoning in the presence of incomplete and inconsistent information, so as to provide consistent answers to user queries. Moreover, DIS @ DIS is able to deal with both local-as-view and global-as-view approaches for the specification of the mapping between the global schema and the sources. DIS@DIS incorporates novel optimization techniques for query processing, which speed up query answering time even in the presence of complex global schemata and large amounts of data. Indeed, we show experimental results that prove the feasibility of our approach. © Springer-Verlag 2004.