An Agent framework for Supporting the MIKS Integration Process

Providing an integrated access to multiple heterogeneous sourcesis a challenging issue in global information systems forcooperation and interoperability. In the past, companies haveequipped themselves with data storing systems building upinformative systems containing data that are related one another,but which are often redundant, not homogeneous and not alwayssemantically consistent. Moreover, to meet the requirements ofglobal, Internet-based information systems, it is important thatthe tools developed for supporting these activities aresemi-automatic and scalable as much as possible.To face the issues related to scalability in the large-scale, inthis paper we propose the exploitation of mobile agents inthe information integration area, and, in particular, the rolesthey play in enhancing the feature of the Momis infrastructure.Momis (Mediator agent for Integration of Knowledge Sources) is asystem that has been conceived as a pool of tools to provide anintegrated access to heterogeneous information stored intraditional databases (for example relational, object orienteddatabases) or in file systems, as well as in semi-structured datasources (XML-file).In this paper we describe the new agent-based framework concerning the integration process as implemented in Miks (Mediator agent for Integration of Knowledge Sources) system.