SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR COMPARING HETEROGENEOUS DATA SOURCES

The present invention is a computer-implemented system and method that allows data in different databases to be shared without requiring the data to be remodeled to fit an existing data convention. The invention allows the comparison of two database structures, and facilitates the searching of information from one database to other databases, or from an external set of search criterion against a plurality of databases. The invention allows information to be exchanged from heterogeneous data sources, or database query sources without having to alter the structure of the data sources that are being searched. A number of techniques may be used to do this comparison and facilitate the cross database searching. Tree comparison methods, user defined mapping methods, the use of similarity comparisons to determine similar database structures and data are used to facilitate the cross database searching.