Modeling Data Correspondence in Multidatabase Systems

An essential part of a multidatabase system is a model which is able to incorporate diier-ent database schemas. This model must be capable of relating the concepts within the shared local data. The relationships which may be included may be as straightforward as a syntax conversion or as complex as conditional attribute equivalence. Moreover, the model should allow queries to be done at the local level while still being guided at the global level. This paper presents an object oriented graph as one such model. The local database concepts and the object oriented graph concepts are re-lated/linked by annotated edges which are used to algorithmically transform one local query into a series of other local subqueries. Thus, this integration method provides a method for model-ing data correspondences across a variety of data models.