Conceptual Overview of PolySPINner 4. In this paper, we have given an overview of our activities toward establishing computer science foundations for transparent data exchange and integration. We have briefly described our work on models that help describe and assess approaches to type compatibility, name management and type safety approaches in polylingual software systems. We have introduced PolySPIN and PolySPINner, an approach and toolset that supports and facilitates the construction and maintenance of polylingual software systems. Although much of our work has been set in the context of programming languages, we believe that our results are applicable to the domain of scientific data and technical data exchange and integration.
Programming languages are powerful tools for building scientific applications.
The results from our formal and practical activities, therefore, should help ease the development of this particular class of applications. We are pursuing several directions in our current and future work. In the area of formal models, we plan to extend and improve our models so that they can account for other crucial aspects of transparent data exchange and integration, such as versions, evolution and dynamic system modification. We also plan on extending the PolySPIN mechanism and PolySPINner toolset. Finally, we envision evaluating and experimenting with our approach in domains that have large scale demands, such as scientific applications.