Briefs

Government Computer News (08/16/04) Vol. 23, No. 23, P. 48; Jackson, Joab

The National Science Foundation has the urge to merge, at least when it comes to databases.

Commercial middleware products have not proved flexible enough for the full range of federal, state and local needs, said Sylvia Spengler, NSF program manager for science and engineering information integration and informatics.

Agencies need faster ways to "hook into a database on the fly, grab the data and move on," she said at a recent conference on digital government.

The agency's Middleware Initiative is currently funding 31 projects, collectively worth about $25 million, that aim to reach beyond commercial offerings. The agency's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering oversee the grants, and other directorates also have middleware projects under way.

At the conference, researchers from the University of Southern California showed how, using a Web services architecture, workers could query 11 databases through one interface.

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