02467naa a2200241 a 450000100080000000500110000800800410001902000180006010000150007824500790009326000090017230000160018152016940019765000290189165000270192065000310194765300360197870000200201470000130203470000210204770000200206877301370208810044382012-10-09       2002    bl uuuu     u00u1 u    #d  a1-892769-22-01 aFILETO, R.  aAn XML-Centered warehouse to manage information of the fruit supply chain.  c2002  ap. 540-547.  aInteroperability among information is a very difficult goal because of the different technologies and application domain concepts employed to develop these systems. The construction of a data warehouse may be the first step in order to achieve some data integration. It involves migration of data in one direction: from the data sources to the warehouse and from there to the data analysis tools. In this process, data need to be understood and put into a uniform representation. Nowadays, XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is beginning to be widely employed as a standard for data representation and exchange in the internet. It provides a uniform syntax to represent data and their structure. The use of XML as an intermediate representation level can lend versatility and openness to a data warehouse. If consensual semantcs are associated to XML data and their markup, the activities involved in the data integration process can be simplified and distributed. The sources can export data to the warehouse in a format suitable for data integration. The warehouse can then supply a variety of views from the integrated data, according to the peculiarities of each data analysis tool. This paper presents an application of these ideas in the devcelopment of a decision support syatem for the brazilian fruit supply chain. The main goals of the project are the construction of a data warehouse and the development of adequate procedures and metodologies to manage data in this domain. The latter results will be useful for future achievement of  interoperability in a wider sense, i.e., the interchange of detailed information among the several chains agents for their harmonic functioning.  aDecision support systems  aInformation technology  aTecnologia da Informação  aSistemas de suporte à decisão1 aMEIRA, C. A. A.1 aNAKA, J.1 aSEIXAS NETO, Á.1 aMEDEIROS, C. B.  tIn: WORLD CONGRESS OF COMPUTERS IN AGRICULTURE AND NATURAL RESOURCES, 2002, Iguaçu Falls. Proceedings... Iguaçu Falls: ASAE, 2002.