| Databases are playing an increasingly important role in organizations. Timely, accurate access to information has become a critical component of gaining competitive advantage. Database schema integration is one field of study motivated by the need to provide improved access to data through interoperability among existing, often disparate databases. A number of emerging issues such as the proliferation of autonomous databases, the diversity of data models and database management systems, the increasing role of distributed systems, and reliance upon individual expertise have further complicated the schema integration task. These issues make new methodologies and automated tools an inevitable component of schema integration research to come.;The testbed system developed for this research demonstrates a high degree of effectiveness in automating negotiated schema integration. While negotiation among users and database administrators has been discussed in the literature, the results of this research show that a negotiating experts approach to an automated schema integration tool is both feasible and effective. This result is especially significant with regard to the integration of autonomous, heterogeneous, and distributed component databases where knowledge from many sources is required.;This research identifies an existing schema integration methodology which addresses these emerging issues. A system implementation architecture is then selected which both maps closely to the schema integration methodology identified and coordinates multiple knowledge sources rather than relying upon a single knowledge source or individual. The effectiveness of an automated tool for database schema integration based upon the schema integration methodology identified within the negotiating experts architecture selected is then evaluated, through the development and validation of a testbed system. |
