The problem of integration multiple information sources into a unified data store currently constitutes one of the most important challenges in data man-agement an integrated de*ion of the data sources in surely one of the most relevant issues.This book is the first comprehensive approach to the construction and the management of cooperative information systems. From a set of input database schemes describing the information content of multiple sources, the techniques presented yield a structured, integrated and consistent de*ion of the information content represented in a suitable data repository. The author builds his work on skilled and controlled use of results and methods from various fields of computer science, such as data mining, algorithmic learning, knowledge representation, database management, etc. The approach presented has been implemented in the prototype system DIKE, Database Intensional Knowledge Extractor, which has been studied in various application contexts.