Use of heterogeneous data sources : three case studies

This paper discusses the process of financial analysis within the context of Composite Information Systems (CIS) through an analysis of three cases. This was written in conjunction with the Composite Information Systems/ Tool Kit (CIS/TK) research project at the MIT International Financial Services Research Center. A primary purpose of the paper was to identify, document, and understand the needs and problems of users of Composite Information Systems. The analysis makes use of the delineation between "physical connectivity" and "logical connectivity." The first case study is from the academic domain. It is an event study of the potential differential effects of the October, 1988 stock market crash across a sample group of companies. The second case study involves Citicorp's North American Investment Bank (NAIB) and their attempt to integrate more than twenty different processing systems. Their task is made even more difficulty by the fact that there are not one but three main groups demanding this integration, each with a somewhat different goal. Finally, the third case study, also from Citicorp, involves the Corporate Financial Analyst Department (CFAD) in the institutional bank. They make use of many different types of data and this paper investigates the problems that they face in integrating the data on both an interand an intra-database level. Each of the three case studies takes the following form: a description of the "problem," an outline of the nature of the data involved, and documentation of the problems that one would face in integration. Finally, these problems are related back to the CIS/TK project.