Information Integration in the Real World

by Ken Orr

From IT's earliest days, the elusive Holy Grail of computing has been a tool (technology) that would allow managers and end users to retrieve information from any system anywhere within the enterprise (anywhere in the world). Over the years, this vision has been dangled repeatedly in front of top management, typically by software vendors, but occasionally by well-meaning CIOs and CTOs. Through the years, a long list of technologies has appeared to meet this promise but then failed to deliver. These include report generators, 4GLs, executive information systems, data warehousing tools, business intelligence (BI), and the World Wide Web, just to mention a few.