The Data Mediation Forum favors the federation approach as a feasible approach contrary to the so called fusion approach. Whereas the fusion approach demands a global data model with all applications adapting to this new standard, the federation approach promotes the use of additional middleware. This enables the system designer to integrate heterogeneous data bases and applications without having to modify the data bases and systems themselves. The middleware is a data mediation framework with adapters and stubs for every system to be integrated.

In order to turn such a general integration layer into reality, a common reference model is needed describing structure and content of the data to be interchanged between the systems of the federation in an object oriented way. This reference model is used as a so called shared data model as a common and standardized way to interchange information via standardized data elements.

Contrary to a unified enterprise data model (UEDM), the common shared data model/the reference model can grow up gradually and evolutionary with every new participating system. It is in addition much smaller than an UEDM as it only comprises the data to be shared. The individual system data remains completely in the responsibility of the system. This decreases administration efforts and increases the model stability.

Existing Problems Philosophy