Information systems are the backbone of many of today's computerized
applications. Distributed databases and the infrastructure needed to
support them have been well studied. However, this book is the first to
address distributed database interoperability by examining the successes
and failures, various approaches, infrastructures, and trends of the
field.
A gap exists in the way that these systems have been investigated by
real practitioners. This gap is more pronounced than usual, partly
because of the way businesses operate, the systems they have, and the
difficulties created by systems' autonomy and heterogeneity.
Telecommunications firms, for example, must deal with an increased
demand for automation while at the same time continuing to function at
their current level. While academics are focusing on investigating
differences between distributed databases, federated databases,
heterogeneous databases, and, more generally, among loosely connected
and tightly coupled systems, those who have to deal with real problems
right away know that the only relevant research is the one that will
ensure that their system works to produce reasonably correct results.
Interconnecting Heterogeneous Information Systems covers the
underlying principles and infrastructures needed to realize truly global
information systems. The book discusses technologies related to
middleware, the Web, workflows, transactions, and data warehousing. It
also overviews architectures with a discussion of critical issues. The
book gives an overview of systems that can be viewed as learning
platforms. While these systems do not translate to successful commercial
realities, they push the envelope in terms of research. Successful
commercial systems have benefited from the experiments conducted in
these prototypes. The book includes two case studies based on the
authors' own work.
Interconnecting Heterogeneous Information Systems is suitable as a
textbook for a graduate-level course on Interconnecting Heterogeneous
Information Systems, as well as a secondary text for a graduate-level
course on database or information systems, and as a reference for
researchers and practitioners in industry.
