work on extending PostgreSQL to data integration systems

Hello, everybody,

I am developing a postgresql-based distributed relational data integration
system which is like the IBM DB2 Information Integrator. And I have started
a pgfoundry project: http://pgfoundry.org/projects/ignite .(codes on it have
already been obsolete.)

The goal of the system is to provide a collection of virtual views in a
pgsql database to integrate data from various distributed, heterogeneous and
autonomous data sources. To achieve this goal, I did my work in two aspects:
(1) outside pgsql: The system utilizes various wrappers to interact with
data sources. A well-defined wrapper interface is presented, which allows
for implementations of concrete wrappers using any language , such as
pl/java. In nature, a wrapper is a collection of pgsql functions which
consists of the function for obtaining metadata of a data source, the
function for exectuing SQL in data source and etc.

(2) inside pgsql: Several modifictions to pgsql is used to improve the
performance of processing data integration queries including the pipelined
FunctionScan operator and support of query
shipping(selection/projection/sort).

The developing work is still ongoing, although an initial version of the
system has already been used in a real application in China. This version
consists of a wrapper for PostgreSQL using libpq and a wrapper for MS SQL
SERVER using pl/java and JDBC. Currently, I have not published all sources
and not provided good documents in the pgfoundry projects. But I will do it
quickly. If anyone is interested in the system, pls contact me.

I have a question. Does the PostgreSQL project have any plan of adding data
integration functionalities in the PostgreSQL system as other DBMS vendors
did?

Thanks.

Yours sincerely,

Lee Rubao
lirubao(at)software(dot)ict(dot)ac(dot)cn

2006-11-1