To Boldly Go Where No Database Has Gone Before: Data Integration Through Data Federation

Mary Roth, IBM

Stevenson Hall 1300
11:00 AM - 11:50 AM

The relational database is an example of a research project gone right. Database researchers solved some challenging research problems (transaction management, backup/recovery, and query optimization), leading to an $8 billion industry in less than thirty years, and making Larry Ellison one of the richest men in the world. In fact, database management systems (DBMS) are so successful that nearly every enterprise has more than one DBMS instance, and more than one DBMS vendor. This leads to a new research challenge: how to extend the benefits of a DBMS to data stored outside the DBMS. In this talk, I will describe two different approaches to data integration, the benefits and drawbacks of each, and which approach appears to be gaining the most traction in the industry.