Mediator-based evolutionary design and development of image meta-analysis environments

We discuss how emerging object-relational database mediator technology can be used to integrate academic freeware and commercial-off-the-shelf software components to create a sequence of gradually more complex and powerful, always semantically and syntactically homogeneous, database centered Image Meta-Analysis Environments. We show how this may be done by definition and utilization of a use-case-based evolutionary design and development process. This process allows subsystems to be produced largely independently by several small specialist subprojects, turning the system integration work into a high-level domain modelling task.