Data Integration using a Multi-agent System

Abstract

The expansion of the communications networks, together with the increasing availability of information from different sources and the growth of data sources led to a situation in which advanced information system must be able to support transparent access to diverse data residing in different and heterogeneous sources. A common problem that faces many organizations is that of multiple, distributed information sources and repositories including databases. Decision making process needs information from different, heterogeneous data sources. To access these data, it needs to carry out their integration into a unified format. Data integration of multiple sources requires creating some form of integrated view to allow for distributed querying. This research, proposes a new approach for data integration that uses an approach based on multi-agent systems (MAS) technology. It considers the different tasks of the data integration process as services offered by actors called agents. To validate the approach, multiagent system for autonomous data integration between two different, heterogeneous database systems is designed and implemented. The proposed approach has proved that multiagent systems are capable of integrating data between different systems in a flexible and efficient way.