Metadatabase solutions for enterprise information integration problems

Abstract
The success of modern information technology in the past decades has brought about the proliferation of systems dedicated to individual groups of applications and functions. This proliferation, in turn, has led to the need for enterprise-wide management and integration of information, and has triggered major efforts such as systems integration, re-engineering, and computer integrated manufacturing. Nonetheless, achieving such integration remains a challenge.To effectively manage information resources and to coordinate processing at a global level requires concepts and technologies that overcome the difficult problems arising from, among other things, combining data with knowledge and managing concurrent multi-database systems. The metadatabase approach offers fresh promise to solve some of these fundamental problems. The basic functionalities and architecture of the metadatabase model are described in this paper. Several examples central to information management are also included to illustrate how the metadatabase approach can be deployed to better manage enterprise-wide information resources.

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