A Case-Based Approach to Information Integration

Information integration is the problem of taking information from distributed, heterogeneous, and often dynamic sources and making them work together as a whole. A number of ideas concerning information integration are based on the notion of rewriting queries. In this paper we propose a distributed casebased approach to the problem of rewriting queries. According to this approach we use a case memory instead of static views, i.e. views that are defined a priori. As a consequence, the mediated schema is dynamically updated, strongly influenced by the queries submitted by a consumer. This approach allows a mediator to face systems where consumers may change their customization needs and information sources may become unavailable, may be added, or may modify their schemas. 1