Database and Expert Systems Integration - Information Systems Reengineering, Integration and Normalization - page 318

Person (MS SQL Server) Staff (Oracle)

Name Name

Sex Department

Father Position

Mother Age

The frame model metadata can be used to create two coupling classes to represent
these two databases. We can then create a new class called Employee that inherits
its properties from these two coupling classes. One problem that may occur during
the process is when the same attribute name exists in two different parent classes;
for example, Name exists in both the Person class and the Staff class. In such cases,
the user needs to define which attribute has a higher priority.
Reengineering is an important feature in the frame model metadata. The system
enables reengineering through the coupling classes and coupling generalization. For
example, consider an existing paediatric ES. The frame model metadata can be used
to reuse parts of this system when building a new ES for child cardiology medical
diagnosis. This is similar to what happens in the real world. A child cardiology case
is diagnosed by a cardiology doctor who consults with a pediatrician.

8.2.2 Implementation of the Frame Model Metadata

To implement the frame model metadata, we must include as inputs, the database
system and the expert system and as output, the Frame model metadata classes as
shown in Fig. 8.10 .

8.3 Steps for Using the Frame Model Metadata in

Database and Expert System Integration

We can apply the frame model metadata as an object-oriented-like database in reen-
gineering existing database systems and expert systems in the following:

8.3.1 Reusing Expert Systems

A company may have an expert system. The ES does not, however, store any data in
a database. The system developer is required to create a database used by the expert
system. This database could be built into a DBMS that has an interface with the
existing expert system. This would require many changes to the source code of the
existing expert systems. The steps for this implementation are:
Step 1. New application systems requirement analysis.