Interoperabilidade

1 Data Integration — Problems, Approaches, and Perspectives
Patrick Ziegler and Klaus R. Dittrich {pziegler, dittrich}@ifi.unizh.ch
Database Technology Research Group Department of Informatics, University of Zurich Summary. Data integration is one of the older research fields in the database area and has emerged shortly after database systems were first introduced into the business world. In this paper, we briefly introduce the problem of integration and, based on an architectural perspective, give an overview of approaches to address the integration issue. We discuss the evolution from structural to semantic integration and shortly present our own research in the SIRUP (Semantic Integration Reflecting User-specific semantic Perspectives) approach. Finally, an outlook to challenging areas of future research in the realm of data integration is given.

1.1 Introduction
In today’s business world, it is typical that enterprises run different but coexisting information systems. Employing these systems, enterprises struggle to realize business opportunities in highly competitive markets. In this setting, the integration of existing information systems is becoming more and more indispensable in order to dynamically meet business and customer needs while leveraging long-term investments in existing IT infrastructure. In general, integration of multiple information systems aims at combining selected systems so that they form a unified new whole and give users the illusion of interacting with one single information system. The reason for integration is twofold: First, given a set of existing information systems, an integrated view can be created to facilitate information access and reuse through a single information access point. Second, given a certain information need, data from different complementing information systems is combined to gain a more comprehensive basis to satisfy the need. There is a manifold of applications that benefit from integrated information. For