Database interoperability through state-based logical data independence

Computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) involving business-to-business transactions depends more and more upon database interoperability. The design of interbusiness CSCW when the businesses are already operating independent systems depends either upon effective reverse engineering (to properly discover the semantics underlying each organisation's systems and through that to develop appropriate matches for interbusiness software), or upon sufficiently rich semantic models and good database management system support for logical data independence (to allow database updating through a logical view). This paper takes the second approach presenting a rich semantic data model that the authors have been developing and have used successfully in a number of major consultancies, and a new approach to logical data independence and view updatability based on that model. We show how these approaches support database interoperability for business-to-business transactions and, for CSCW within an organisation, how they support federated databases.