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Publication
Communications of the ACM
Review
Information integration in the enterprise
Abstract
Software integration problems are solved, information integration tools used in practice are described, core technologies of integration tools are reviewed, and future integration trends are identified. The solution of an integration problem is provided by programs aligning data instances, as data formats of the extracted text are identical to those in the relational database. Various types of integration tools include data warehouse loading, virtual data integration, message mapping, object-to-relational mappers, document management, and portal management. The core technologies include extensible markup language (XML), schema standards, data cleansing, and schema mapping and matching. Commercial tools that could reduce the cost of integration while changing the structure of a data source and result in integration redesign, are being developed by large enterprises.