A methodology to assist with a distributed information discovery process for autonomous databases

Abstract

In this technical report we discuss a methodology and a support tool to assist the coordinator of a federation with the construction and evolution of hierarchical information structures. The definition of the terms composing the hierarchical information structures is based on the interests of the users and the applications, and the information that each database system shares with the other components. Therefore, the different group names refer to the types of databases participating in the federation. The other levels are related to the entity names, attribute names, class names, object names, and instances of the databases. The methodology consists of constructing a hierarchical information structure by incremental addition of the participating database systems. The support tool assists with the automation of some steps during construction and evolution of the structures.