Metadata-Based Middleware for Integrating Information Systems

Elisabeth Kapsammer

Metadata-Based Middleware for Integrating Information Systems

Elisabeth Kapsammer

Research output: Thesis › Doctoral thesis

Abstract

Today, information systems are widely employed for administrating large amounts of data of various application areas. Due to historical, organizational and technical reasons their infrastructure is usually characterized by the keywords distribution and heterogeneity. To enable cooperation among distributed and heterogeneous system components and to ensure one common access, it is frequently required to achieve interoperability and to further integrate them logically. However, distribution and heterogeneity represent major barriers against achieving these goals. This thesis presents 3 systems realizing middleware to overcome these barriers. COMan integrates an object-oriented application and a relational database, IRO-DB focuses on the integration of arbitrary relational as well as oo. database systems and OASIS deals with the integration of various security concepts at an abstract description level. All these systems achieve logical integration. They provide transparency with respect to distribution and heterogeneity while preserving the autonomy of the system components being integrated as far as possible. To allow for a flexible and generic integration all systems realize a metadata-based approach. This metadata-based approach prevents the hard-coding and distribution of the transformation knowledge, required due to distribution and heterogeneity aspects, over various system components. Rather, it is centralized in a reified way within a repository, thus, resulting in a system able to perform the essential transformations automatically and open to adapt to changing requirements. Based on the experience gained by developing these 3 systems, a criteria catalogue is developed allowing to categorize and evaluate different kinds of metadata-based middleware.

Original language	English
Publication status	Published - Apr 1999

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 9 Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

Fields of science

102001 Artificial intelligence
102006 Computer supported cooperative work (CSCW)
102010 Database systems
102014 Information design
102015 Information systems
102016 IT security
102028 Knowledge engineering
102019 Machine learning
102022 Software development
102025 Distributed systems
502007 E-commerce
505002 Data protection
506002 E-government
509018 Knowledge management
202007 Computer integrated manufacturing (CIM)
102033 Data mining
102035 Data science
101004 Biomathematics
101027 Dynamical systems
101028 Mathematical modelling
101029 Mathematical statistics
101014 Numerical mathematics
101015 Operations research
101016 Optimisation
101017 Game theory
101018 Statistics
101019 Stochastics
101024 Probability theory
101026 Time series analysis
102 Computer Sciences
102003 Image processing
102004 Bioinformatics
102013 Human-computer interaction
102018 Artificial neural networks
103029 Statistical physics
106005 Bioinformatics
106007 Biostatistics
202017 Embedded systems
202035 Robotics
202036 Sensor systems
202037 Signal processing
305901 Computer-aided diagnosis and therapy
305905 Medical informatics
305907 Medical statistics
102032 Computational intelligence
101031 Approximation theory

Cite this

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title = "Metadata-Based Middleware for Integrating Information Systems",

abstract = "Today, information systems are widely employed for administrating large amounts of data of various application areas. Due to historical, organizational and technical reasons their infrastructure is usually characterized by the keywords distribution and heterogeneity. To enable cooperation among distributed and heterogeneous system components and to ensure one common access, it is frequently required to achieve interoperability and to further integrate them logically. However, distribution and heterogeneity represent major barriers against achieving these goals. This thesis presents 3 systems realizing middleware to overcome these barriers. COMan integrates an object-oriented application and a relational database, IRO-DB focuses on the integration of arbitrary relational as well as oo. database systems and OASIS deals with the integration of various security concepts at an abstract description level. All these systems achieve logical integration. They provide transparency with respect to distribution and heterogeneity while preserving the autonomy of the system components being integrated as far as possible. To allow for a flexible and generic integration all systems realize a metadata-based approach. This metadata-based approach prevents the hard-coding and distribution of the transformation knowledge, required due to distribution and heterogeneity aspects, over various system components. Rather, it is centralized in a reified way within a repository, thus, resulting in a system able to perform the essential transformations automatically and open to adapt to changing requirements. Based on the experience gained by developing these 3 systems, a criteria catalogue is developed allowing to categorize and evaluate different kinds of metadata-based middleware.",

author = "Elisabeth Kapsammer",

year = "1999",

month = apr,

language = "English",

}

TY - BOOK

T1 - Metadata-Based Middleware for Integrating Information Systems

AU - Kapsammer, Elisabeth

PY - 1999/4

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N2 - Today, information systems are widely employed for administrating large amounts of data of various application areas. Due to historical, organizational and technical reasons their infrastructure is usually characterized by the keywords distribution and heterogeneity. To enable cooperation among distributed and heterogeneous system components and to ensure one common access, it is frequently required to achieve interoperability and to further integrate them logically. However, distribution and heterogeneity represent major barriers against achieving these goals. This thesis presents 3 systems realizing middleware to overcome these barriers. COMan integrates an object-oriented application and a relational database, IRO-DB focuses on the integration of arbitrary relational as well as oo. database systems and OASIS deals with the integration of various security concepts at an abstract description level. All these systems achieve logical integration. They provide transparency with respect to distribution and heterogeneity while preserving the autonomy of the system components being integrated as far as possible. To allow for a flexible and generic integration all systems realize a metadata-based approach. This metadata-based approach prevents the hard-coding and distribution of the transformation knowledge, required due to distribution and heterogeneity aspects, over various system components. Rather, it is centralized in a reified way within a repository, thus, resulting in a system able to perform the essential transformations automatically and open to adapt to changing requirements. Based on the experience gained by developing these 3 systems, a criteria catalogue is developed allowing to categorize and evaluate different kinds of metadata-based middleware.

AB - Today, information systems are widely employed for administrating large amounts of data of various application areas. Due to historical, organizational and technical reasons their infrastructure is usually characterized by the keywords distribution and heterogeneity. To enable cooperation among distributed and heterogeneous system components and to ensure one common access, it is frequently required to achieve interoperability and to further integrate them logically. However, distribution and heterogeneity represent major barriers against achieving these goals. This thesis presents 3 systems realizing middleware to overcome these barriers. COMan integrates an object-oriented application and a relational database, IRO-DB focuses on the integration of arbitrary relational as well as oo. database systems and OASIS deals with the integration of various security concepts at an abstract description level. All these systems achieve logical integration. They provide transparency with respect to distribution and heterogeneity while preserving the autonomy of the system components being integrated as far as possible. To allow for a flexible and generic integration all systems realize a metadata-based approach. This metadata-based approach prevents the hard-coding and distribution of the transformation knowledge, required due to distribution and heterogeneity aspects, over various system components. Rather, it is centralized in a reified way within a repository, thus, resulting in a system able to perform the essential transformations automatically and open to adapt to changing requirements. Based on the experience gained by developing these 3 systems, a criteria catalogue is developed allowing to categorize and evaluate different kinds of metadata-based middleware.

M3 - Doctoral thesis

ER -