Autonomous Applications - Towards a Better Data Integration Model

One of the most important and critical part of integrating already existing standalone applications is to design and implement a common data model and the corresponding data access layer which makes both data sources and processed results being shared and accessible over the applications in question. In case of even well-architected applications or application systems, establishing a common data model and the layer that gives access to data costs relatively large human and computer development resources. The problem of integration may be investigated from several aspects. The esence of these aproaches are the same: trying to achieve run-time environment independent applications’ logic. One aspect is OMG’s Model Driven Architecture Frame Work [5]. The primary goals of OMG’s MDA are portability, interoperability and resuability through architectural concernes of specifying Application’s logic, their operational environments, and technical aspects of their implementation details, and mappings between them. This paper views the same problem but with focus on different structural apearances of applications’ data, mappings between them, and possible integration of such data models. We call applications autonomous, if they are independent of their all time run-time data access environment. Concerning applications’ autonomy, our base idea is that the most natural media that is able to carry information on structural apperance of data and mappings between them are data themselves, using Document Data Model also presented here.