Design Support for Database Federations

Proc. 18 International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER'99, Paris, Nov.'99), LNCS, Springer-Verlag, 1999. Federated database systems provide a homogeneous interface to possibly heterogeneous local database systems. This homogeneous interface consists of a global schema which is the result of a logical integration of the schemata of the corresponding local database systems and le systems. In this paper, we sketch the integration process and a set of tools for supporting the design process. Besides the classical database schema integration, the design process for federated information systems requires the integration of other aspects like integrity rules, authorization policies and transactional processes. This paper reports on an integrated approach to tool support of several of these integration aspects. The different integration facets are linked via the database integration method GIM allowing a high degree of automatic integration steps.