Object-Oriented Integration of Legacy Systems - Maintaining Global Integrity through Mediators

This paper presents an overview of the Persistence product, an objected-oriented interface to relational databases, that has been tested on the integration of multiple heterogeneous relational systems. We describe a sample active multidatabase application and propose extensions of the active properties offered by Persistence in order to use it as a mediator capable of managing global integrity constraints. 1. INTRODUCTION Intelligent cooperative information systems require powerful tools to make existing applications interoperable. After several years of research, some commercial products have appeared on the market. Among them, we have evaluated Persistence 1 , an object-oriented interface to relational database management systems (RDBMSs). Global integrity maintenance between heterogeneous data repositories in a federation of legacy systems is a frequently discussed problem. Our aim is to utilize an active, object-oriented system for the implementation of an active mediator compon..