Simplifying Information Integration: Object-Based Flow-of-Mappings Framework for Integration

The Clio project at IBM Almaden investigates foundational aspects of data transformation, with particular emphasis on the design and execution of schema mappings. We now use Clio as part of a broader data-flow framework in which mappings are just one component. These data-flows express complex transformations between several source and target schemas and require multiple mappings to be specified. This paper describes research issues we have encountered as we try to create and run these mapping-based data-flows. In particular, we describe how we use Unified Famous Objects (UFOs), a schema abstraction similar to business objects, as our data model, how we reason about flows of map, pings over UFOs, and how we create and deploy transformations into different run-time engines.