Patent ID: 8375029

Claim:
A system for processing data comprising: a plurality of resource interfaces each of which is configured to access a corresponding underlying resource; a processor unit for integrating data accessed from the underlying resources and controlling a user interface; and a data store accessible by the processor unit for storing a user ontology comprising a plurality of concepts and mappings between the underlying resources and the concepts of the user ontology wherein: the processor is configured to display to a user, via the user interface, a view of all of the underlying resources currently accessible to the system and to receive from the user, via the user interface, a user-selection of a plurality of these to form a subset comprising some, but not all, of the underlying resources from which to form an integrated view of the selected sub-set of resources, the processor being configured to generate the integrated view of the selected sub-set of underlying resources in response to the received user-selection by identifying which concepts in the user ontology are covered by the selected resources using the stored mappings and integrating the selected resources into as few groups as possible and forming for the or each formed group a pruned ontology by pruning the user ontology to remove any concepts not covered by any of the resources in the group and causing the intergrated view, comprising the or each pruned user ontology, to be displayed to the user via the user interface; wherein the processor is further configured to receive, via the user interface, a user-entered query expressed in terms of the pruned ontology; and wherein the processor is further configured to generate sub-queries for sending to respective underlying resources based on the user entered query and to retrieve in response to those sub-queries any relevant data associated with the user entered query from the respective resources of the selected sub-set of underlying resources and to automatically fuse results of the retrieved data and present the fused results in terms of the pruned ontology to the user via the user interface.