Acknowledgments

Our sincere thanks to all the contributors who worked very hard to complete their chapters on time. We would also like to thank Alicia Carey, Brenda Mulligan, and Mary T. O'Brien at Addison-Wesley for all their help and support in getting this book to publication. Our grateful thanks to the external reviewers for their constructive comments, which helped improve the overall quality of this book.

—Akmal B. Chaudhri, Awais Rashid, Roberto Zicari

Chapter 8

For helpful discussions on this topic, I am indebted to Ignacio Vera, Sian Hope, Thomas Varsamidis, and Michael Baxter of the School of Informatics at the University of Wales, Bangor; Ronald Bourret and Akmal Chaudhri, gurus of XML databases; Tony Eastwood of ETL Solutions; Raimundo Lozano of Hospital Clinic (Barcelona); Mike Malloch of theKnowNet; Oggy East of Semantise; and Ian Williams of Arval PHH. I would also like to thank Loulou Smith, my parents Ann and Graham Edwards, my grandmother Margaret King, and my late grandfather Edmund King for all their support and encouragement in this and many other endeavors.

Chapter 12

Thanks to all the great people in the OAI team for making this project a success.

Chapter 13

The authors would like to thank the ONR, PE 63782N, and Dr. Dick Root, program manager, for funding this effort under the Generation and Exploitation of the Common Environment Program.

Chapter 14

I am very grateful to Professor Robert Simon and Professor Elizabeth White in offering many suggestions and conceptual ideas for this research topic.

Chapter 19

This research was funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).