A translation protocol achieving consensus of semantics between cooperating heterogeneous database systems

Abstract

The paper articulates an approach to resolving the problem of syntactic and semantic heterogeneity among disparate pre-existing database systems through the use of a high-level semantic-oriented protocol for information interchange. This protocol supports many of the requirements of a loosely coupled federation of database systems such as the need for interoperability and the need to support the client/server distributed application model. The protocol aids translation by facilitating cross database linkages and access on the basis of mutually agreeable descriptions of heterogeneous schema constructs which are passed from a client to a server system. The proposed approach offers flexibility (for example, it can be used for building object-oriented wrappers and interfaces which access legacy relational systems), DBMS independence, and reusability of inter-model (schema) translation results.