Unifying Widely Distributed Hetergeneous Databases

The project objective is to test the feasibility of new network protocols for integration of a large collection of widely distributed heterogeneous databases and object data respositories into a unified system. Data contained in these databases will include text, graphics, sound, video, etc. The project will provide 2 kinds of services: 1. Index services to increase the ease and efficiency of locating information. 2. Retrieval services to present and conditionally deliver the selected data to the user. This project will simplify the task of accessing widely distributed databases and reduce both the costs and the time required to search them. The project speeds searching by building a mesh of index servers. This allows very rapid location of relevant resources, and the potential to keep the indices constantly updated. The project facilitates access and retrieval by caching resources located by a query, and allows the user to preview them before downloading them over low-bandwidth network links. The user sees a unified system instead of a large collection of databases. Anticipated Benefits: The government and private sectors can use this system to integrate databases on an enterprise-wide or even industry-wide scale. In addition, organizations can use the idexing service to track individual documents on an enterprise-wide basis or to provide a virtual searchable library of all of the organizations documents.