Information Brokering

In large human-computer networks, information brokers provide links among syntactically and semantically heterogeneous information sources with information users who are equally diverse in their interests and capabilities. After giving a brief overview of the eld, we compare three approaches to information brokering which share the idea of using domain-oriented meta models to focus the brokering process. One is intended for search in large open database networks without any predeened organizational infrastructure, the second for information exchange in distributed and frequently changing organizations. The third approach demonstrates that the \traditional" multi-database task of no-tational transformation required to cover the syntactic diierences among information sources can be addressed in a rather similar manner.