Mediator systems in E-commerce applications

The world today is characterised by the proliferation of information sources available through media such as the WWW, databases, semi-structured files, etc. But, very often, this information is scattered, heterogeneous and weakly structured (semi-structured data). E-commerce is, by nature, one field in which this phenomena is specially strong. This paper overviews a mediator system for the construction of structured and semi-structured data integration applications. This system has been used in the construction of various applications on the Internet and in corporate environments, which are being used in real operational environments. Some conclusions arising from the experience gained from the use of such applications are also put forward.