In a distributed environment, with multiple users having access to the database for updating the data, inconsistencies crop up posing a challenge for the database management system. It calls for restricted access for the data update in the EII products. In general, the database is to be maintained read only. To make it happen smoothly, the metadata of the different data sources is to be integrated and a centralized metadata based retrieval mechanism should be in place.
The data getting generated along a supply chain gets stored in a data warehouse accessible for the different elements of the supply chain. A data warehouse performs the conventional Extract, transform and load (ETL) operations over the data (O'Leary, Daniel, 2000). The Enterprise information integration (EII) technology and the tools can be used to support the integration of the data. ETL can sit as a part in EII, enhancing the different abstract levels of the data over which EII operates. The architecture of ETL in a modern organization is shown in figure 1
Architecture of ETL in modern organization