Building a portal to achieve cross-Organisational information sharing and dissemination

Organisations store large amounts of data in their different databases; this data may be considered part of their wealth, and should be used for organisational benefit. Data integration may be done through new software applications, which contribute to planning by using innovative information products. There are two views toward the integration of databases; first is the data requirement of the organisation's business application; second is the technical capability to integrate various data enabling software applications to operate and achieve expected objectives. Thus, technology facilitates the use of new techniques, but creates a more technically complex environment; especially when information technology is based on layers and components structures. Building applications to access more than one type of database requires knowledge of many technical issues, including database structures. Proficiency is needed to apply the right mechanisms to connect to databases, and fetch and manipulate the data recovered. This paper explores the integration mechanisms between a corporate portal application, and various information system databases. Oracle Portal is used to demonstrate the integration techniques used to group data from different databases producing new information products. Case studies show how the portal helps to validate and enhance data.