A methodology for the integration multiple distributed heterogeneous databases: application to databases of the Tomahawk engineering community

Abstract

Engineering 2000 is a project initiated by Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) and designed to develop an infrastructure for the sharing of engineering data and information to support the current and future needs of the Tomahawk engineering support community. The goal of Engineering 2000 is to integrate the engineering, logistics, and management automated tools of the Tomahawk community into a single infrastructure. This thesis investigates the integration of Tomahawk distributed heterogeneous databases. It develops a six- step methodology for identifying an integrated strategy and architecture for heterogenous databases in a distributed environment and apply it to the two most significant databases used by the Tomahawk engineering community, Tomahawk Information Management Engineering System (TIMES) and Tomahawk Engineering Exchange Network (TEXN). The application of the methodology to these databases suggests a loosely coupled architecture for integrating their data. (MM)