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Institution

Elmagarmid, Ahmed

ake@cs.purdue.edu

Purdue University

Abstract
The ever expanding reliance on computers has meant a greater dependence on databases to manage critical data for the everyday business.

For instance, government agencies use a plethora of databases to manage and provide services and resources under their jurisdiction. The quality and cost-effectiveness of government services could tremendously be improved if techniques are available to access government and non-government databases in a seamless fashion.

The WWW offers a unique opportunity for the development of Web-based database techniques to seamlessly interoperate islands of autonomous and heterogeneous databases to cater for the needs of the people. In case of a large network of auto- nomous and heterogeneous databases as those potentially accessible from the Web, a meaningful organization and seg- mentation of databases would have to be based on simple ontologies that describe coherent slices of the information space.

These distributed ontologies would filter interac- tions, accelerate information searches, and allow for the sharing of data in a tractable manner. We propose the use of distributed ontologies of information repositories that get established through a distributed domain ontologies. This meta-information would represent the domain of interest of the underlying information repositories. For example, col- lections of databases that store information about the same topic are grouped together. Individual databases join and leave the formed ontologies at their own discretion. Ontol- ogy (inter-ontology relationships) formation and mainte- nance, would occur via a special-purpose language.

Govern- ment welfare and social services will be used as a case study and proof of concept of the proposed techniques. Indeed, this type of government agencies typically consists of dozens of autonomous departments providing services to needy and indigent citizens. In many cases, as we learned, the process is inefficient and costly to both the agency and citizens.

One of the major problems facing this agency is the use of multiple , isolated, heterogeneous, and possibly autonomous information systems that are hard to intero- perate. Purdue and Virginia Tech researchers have teamed up with state and federal agencies namely, the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA), the Indiana Department of Workforce Development (DWD), and the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to help them move their database management technology to a level where the HHS, FSSA, DWD, and citizens receiving services, would be served effectively and efficiently.