Autonomous Information Integration: A Theoretical Perspective

There has been a lot of interest and research on Data/Information Integration across multiple heterogeneous sources in recent days. Researchers across the board have shed light on the problem from different angle and proposed solutions using different perspective. Even though the problem of Integration has been researched for long time, autonomous ‘On the Fly’ Integration has not been investigated in depth in the near past. But with the certain presence of ‘World Wide Web’ as a huge data repository, the need for autonomous ‘on the fly’ integration is more than ever before. Several part of the solution has been available here and there in isolation but a complete and coherent description of the problem and the solution has not been presented yet. In this paper we have discussed the problem of Autonomous Integration of Web Sources in all its breadth and width and have presented a theoretical model of the problem of autonomous integration. And the model presented can be implemented by tools already available or can be implemented developing new tools following the specification detailed in this paper. The solution has been modularized in such a way that the individual pieces fit into the whole picture seamlessly. Even though the proposed model will work with any data source but we have given more emphasis on web in general and hidden web sources (Information hidden behind a web form) in