HERMES:
A Heterogeneous Reasoning and Mediator System

Authors:

Abstract:

Hybrid Knowledge Bases (HKB), due to Nerode and Subrahmanian, is a paradigm for integrating information from diverse sources. It forms a framework within which mediators, proposed by Wiederhold, may be formalized. HERMES is a system based on the HKB theory that has been under development over the past two years. It provides a general, declarative language for defining a mediator, which expresses semantic integration of information from diverse data sources and reasoning systems. The compiler for this language contains a facility that enables the incremental integration of new systems into an existing mediator system. Thus mediators are extensible. This paper describes the design and implementation of HERMES. Techniques for extending an existing mediator are described, illustrating how certain parts can be automated, while others may be interactively presented to a system integrator for his/her input. The system currently runs on Sun Sparc stations (under Unix), as well as on the IBM-PC platform under DOS/Windows 3.1.

Organization of the paper

1. Introduction
2. The HERMES System
   2.1. System Architecture
   
   2.1.1. The Mediator Author
   2.1.2. End-Users
   
   2.2. The Mediator Language
   
   2.2.1. The Domain of Relational DBMSs
   2.2.2. The Domain of Spatial DBMSs
   2.2.3. A Return to the Mediator Language
   2.2.4. The Domain of Text Databases
   2.2.5. The Domain of Pictorial Databases
   
   2.3. The Mediator Compiler
   
   2.3.1. The Domain Catalog
   2.3.2. The Standard Data Format
   2.3.3. Internal Facts
   
   2.4. The Mediator Programming Environment (MPE)
   
   2.4.1. The Domain Integration Toolkit
   2.4.2. The Conflict Resolution (CR) Toolkit
   2.4.3. The Information Pooling (IP) Toolkit
   2.4.4. Learning in HERMES
   
   2.5. Yellow Page Servers
   2.6. Heterogeneous User Interface for End-Users
   
   3. Applications
   
   3.1. Case Study: Integrating Terrain Maps, Relational Databases, and Planning
   3.2. Case Study: Face Recogition for Law Enforcement Applications
   3.3. System Usage
   3.4. Related Work
   
   4. Conclusions
   References

   Postcript version (5.6M) of the paper is also available.

   Related papers:

   • S. Adali, V.S. Subrahmanian, Amalgamating Knowledge Bases, III: Distributed Mediators, International Journal of Intelligent Cooperative Information Systems, 1994.
   • M. Kifer, V. S. Subrahmanian, Theory of Generalized Annotated Logic Programming and its Applications, Journal of Logic Programming, 12, 4, pp. 335--368, 1992.
   • J. Lu, A. Nerode, V.S. Subrahmanian, Hybrid Knowledge Bases, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 1994.
   • S. Marcus, V.S. Subrahmanian, Multimedia Database Systems, 1994. Submitted for publication.
   • V.S. Subrahmanian, Amalgamating Knowledge Bases, ACM Transactions on Database Systems, 19, 2, pp. 291--331, 1994.

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