Apparatus and method for an automatic information integration flow optimizer

A method for automatically optimizing an information integration flow, the method comprising the steps of:

• receiving a tool-specific input file representing a physical information integration flow;
• parsing the tool-specific input file to identify semantics of the physical information integration flow;
• creating a tool-agnostic input file containing rich semantics of at least one of datasets, implementations, schema, operators, database management systems, or ETL tools;
• transforming the tool-agnostic input file into an input directed acyclic graph (DAG);
• providing the input DAG to a quality objective (QoX) driven optimizer unit;
• and
• applying one or more heuristic algorithms to the input DAG to develop an optimum information integration flow design based on the rich semantics.

A computer readable program encoded in a computer readable medium comprising:

• an executable computer program code configured to instruct a system to automatically optimize an information integration flow, the executable computer program code comprising the steps of:
• receiving a tool-specific input file representing a physical information integration flow;
• parsing the tool-specific input file to identify semantics of the physical information integration flow;
• creating a tool-agnostic input file containing rich semantics of at least one of datasets, implementations, schema, operators, database management systems, or ETL tools;
• transforming the tool-agnostic input file into an input directed acyclic graph (DAG);
• providing the input DAG to a quality objective (QoX) driven optimizer unit;
• and
• applying one or more heuristic algorithms to the input DAG to develop an optimum information integration flow design based on the rich semantics.