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Achieving uniform access to media objects in heterogeneous media repositories requires dealing with the problem of metadata interoperability. Currently there exist many interoperability techniques, with quite varying potential for resolving the structural and semantic heterogeneities that can exist between metadata stored in distinct repositories. Besides giving a general overview of the field of metadata interoperability, we provide a categorization of existing interoperability techniques, describe their characteristics, and compare their quality by analyzing their potential for resolving various types of heterogeneities. Based on our work, domain experts and technicians get an overview and categorization of existing metadata interoperability techniques and can select the appropriate approach for their specific metadata integration scenarios. Our analysis explicitly shows that metadata mapping is the appropriate technique in integration scenarios where an agreement on a certain metadata standard is not possible. Categories and Subject Descriptors: A.1 [General Literature]: Introductory and Survey; H.3.7 [Information Storage and Retrieval]: Digital Libraries--Metadata, Standards, Interoperability; H.5.1 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Multimedia Information Systems General Terms: Design, Management, Standardization Additional Key Words and Phrases: Metadata standards, interoperability, mapping ACM Reference Format: Haslhofer, B. and Klas, W. 2010. A survey of techniques for achieving metadata interoperability. ACM Comput. Surv. 42, 2, Article 7 (February 2010), 37 pages. DOI = 10.1145/1667062.1667064. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1667062.1667064

MPEG-7 constitutes a promising standard for the description of multimedia content. It can be expected that a lot of applications based on MPEG-7 media descriptions will be set up in the near future. Therefore, means for the adequate management of large amounts of MPEG-7-compliant media descriptions are certainly desirable. Essentially, MPEG-7 media descriptions are XML documents following media description schemes defined with a variant of XML Schema. Thus, it is reasonable to investigate current database solutions for XML documents regarding their suitability for the management of these descriptions. In this paper, we motivate and present critical requirements for the management of MPEG-7 media descriptions and the resulting consequences for XML database solutions. Along these requirements, we discuss current state-of-the-art database solutions for XML documents. The analysis and comparison unveil the limitations of current database solutions with respect to the management of MPEG-7 media descriptions and point the way to the need for a new generation of XML database solutions. Categories and Subject Descriptors: A.1 [Introductory and Survey]; H.5.1 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Multimedia Information Systems; H.2.4 [Database Management]: Systems; H.3.7 [Information Storage and Retrieval]: Digital Libraries--Standards, MPEG-7; H.2.8 [Database Management]: Database Applications General Terms: Languages, Measurement, Standardization Additional Key Words and Phrases: MPEG-7, multimedia databases, XML database systems

Advanced multimedia applications require adequate support for the modeling of multimedia content by multimedia document models. More and more this support calls for not only the adequate modeling of the temporal and spatial course of a multimedia presentation and its interactions, but also for the partial reuse of multimedia documents and adaptation to a given user context. However, our thorough investigation of existing standards for multimedia document models such as HTML, MHEG, SMIL, and HyTime leads to us the conclusion that these standard models do not provide sufficient modeling support for reuse and adaptation. Therefore, we propose a new approach for the modeling of adaptable and reusable multimedia content, the [Z.sub.Y]X model. The model offers primitives that provide--beyond the more or less common primitives for temporal, spatial, and interaction modeling--a variform support for reuse of structure and layout of document fragments and for the adaptation of the content and its presentation to the user context. We present the model in detail and illustrate the application and effectiveness of these concepts by samples taken from our Cardio-OP application in the domain of cardiac surgery. With the [Z.sub.Y]X model, we developed a comprehensive means for advanced multimedia content creation: support for template-driven authoring of multimedia content and support for flexible, dynamic composition of multimedia documents customized to the user's local context and needs. The approach significantly impacts and supports the authoring process in terms of methodology and economic aspects. Index Terms--Multimedia document model, reuse, adaptation, multimedia database system.