Global integration of visual databases

Different visual databases have been designed in various locations. The global integration of such databases can enable users to access data across the world in a transparent manner. In this paper, we investigate an approach to the design and creation of an integrated information system which supports global visual query access to various visual databases over the Internet. Specifically, a metaserver including a hierarchical metadatabase, a metasearch agent, and a query manager is designed to support such an integration. The metadatabase houses abstracted data about individual remote visual databases. To support visual content-based queries, the abstracted data in the metadatabase reflect the semantics of each visual database. The query manager extracts the feature contents from the queries. The metasearch agent processes the queries by matching their feature contents with the metadata. A list of relevant database sites is derived for efficient retrieval of the query in the selected databases. The performance of the system is refined based on user's feedback. The proposed system is implemented using Java in a Web-based environment.