Mediation to deal with information heterogeneity

this work, we address the problem of data and information interoperability, focusing on the Earth System Science information domain. We argue that, nowadays, well-established architectures and standard technologies are available to address and implement data interoperability. In particular, mediation proves a valuable and flexible approach to harmonize data. The mediated approach relies on the identification of articulation points around a particular boundary and the encapsulation of the adaptation logic into a specialized component: the mediator [2]. For example, given an administrative boundary protected by a firewall, an HTTP proxy is in charge of handling HTTP traffic between internal clients and external servers. On a conceptual basis, data integration (which is an aspect of data interoperability) is easily achieved by mediation, by adapting the source data model to the destination one before data exchange. To avoid excessive proliferation of mediation compo-