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Grid-based semantic integration of heterogeneous data resources: Implementation on a HealthGrid
This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University.The semantic integration of geographically distributed and heterogeneous data
resources still remains a key challenge in Grid infrastructures. Today's
mainstream Grid technologies hold the promise to meet this challenge in a
systematic manner, making data applications more scalable and manageable. The
thesis conducts a thorough investigation of the problem, the state of the art, and
the related technologies, and proposes an Architecture for Semantic Integration of
Data Sources (ASIDS) addressing the semantic heterogeneity issue. It defines a
simple mechanism for the interoperability of heterogeneous data sources in order
to extract or discover information regardless of their different semantics. The
constituent technologies of this architecture include Globus Toolkit (GT4) and
OGSA-DAI (Open Grid Service Architecture Data Integration and Access)
alongside other web services technologies such as XML (Extensive Markup
Language). To show this, the ASIDS architecture was implemented and tested in a
realistic setting by building an exemplar application prototype on a HealthGrid
(pilot implementation).
The study followed an empirical research methodology and was informed by
extensive literature surveys and a critical analysis of the relevant technologies and
their synergies. The two literature reviews, together with the analysis of the
technology background, have provided a good overview of the current Grid and
HealthGrid landscape, produced some valuable taxonomies, explored new paths
by integrating technologies, and more importantly illuminated the problem and
guided the research process towards a promising solution. Yet the primary
contribution of this research is an approach that uses contemporary Grid
technologies for integrating heterogeneous data resources that have semantically
different. data fields (attributes). It has been practically demonstrated (using a
prototype HealthGrid) that discovery in semantically integrated distributed data
sources can be feasible by using mainstream Grid technologies, which have been
shown to have some Significant advantages over non-Grid based approaches