Metamodel-Based Information Integration at Industrial Scale

Flexible data integration has been an important IT research goal for decades. About ten years ago, a significant step was taken with the introduction of declarative methods (e.g., Clio). Since this work, mostly based on classic dependency analysis, extensions have been developed that express more powerful semantic relationships. However, much of this work has remained focused at the relational database (i.e., relatively low) level, and many of the extensions revert to specific algorithms and function specifications. At the same time, models have evolved to incorporate more powerful semantics (object or ontology-based methods). The work presented in the paper uses flexible metamodel-based mapping definitions that enable a model-driven engineering approach to integration, allowing declarative mapping specifications to be automatically executed at runtime within a single-formalism and single-tool framework. The paper reports how to create executable mappings for large-scale data integration scenarios with an interactive graphical tool.