The philosophy just proposed is based on the advantages of the federation approach:

• Existing data bases and applications have neither to be change nor to be modified. The data mediation framework wraps the legacy systems. It is an intelligent middleware serving as a kind of "glue" melting the former legacy systems into a new, bigger system: the federation. Applications and data bases are connected supporting the user with the sum of the respective functionalities.
• The proposed way enables the reduction of migration and adaption costs to a minimum. Using the right tools and meta models, only the reference model has to be expanded and respective drivers have to be generated. The integration of a new system is reduced to the definition of the standardized data elements to be used for data interchange and the generation of the driver software.
• In addition, the data administration remains by the legacy systems. Only when there is a change of the extern view of the systems data, an update of the standardized data elements to be used may be necessary resulting in the - automated - generation of new driver software. This reduces configuration management to a minimum. Only if data to be interchanged are changed, the common shared data model has to checked.
• As every data base and every application has its own data mediation driver connecting them to the federation via standardized data elements, it is possible to modify each system, introduce new versions etc. without having to change the design of the federation. It is possible to change systems and components "on the fly". New requirements can be met by introducing new systems offering the needed functionalities without having to shut down the other participants of the federation.

For Data Mediation Forum the data mediation framework is a unified and common software platform to increase the functionality of existing information systems by

• Objective driven connectivity of systems,
• Integration into the World Wide Web including
• Flexible data management for structured and unstructured data (including multi media)
• Evolutionary and cost reducing software development and
• Security aspects.

Philosopy Mission Solution