ABSTRACT

Recent developments in information systems technologies have resulted in computerizing many applications in various business areas. Data has become a critical resource in many organizations and, therefore, efficient access to data, sharing the data, extracting information from the data, and making use of the information has become an urgent need. As a result, there have been many efforts to not only integrate the various data sources scattered across several sites, but it has also become important to extract information from these databases in the form of patterns and trends. These data sources may be managed by database management systems or they may be warehoused in a repository. The advent of the World Wide Web (WWW) in the mid-1990s has resulted in even greater demand for managing data, information, and knowledge effectively. There is now so much data on the Web that managing it with conventional tools is becoming almost an impossibility. New tools and techniques are needed to effectively manage this data. Therefore, to provide interoperability and warehousing for multiple data sources and systems, and to extract information from the databases and data warehouses, various tools are being developed.