This paper describes an operational implementation of a simple model to assist with maize variety selection and harvest data prediction, using personal computer (PC) relational database software. The three-stage growing-degree model uses daily weather data and any current season field observations of silking and maturity to predict physiological maturity and harvest date. Thirty years of historical data are used to estimate the expected harvest date and its variation, and explore the risk of frosts prior to crop maturity. A grain procurement company used the software over several seasons to advise its clients, and the software was extensively revised over this period.
Experience with this single crop, PC-based, monolingual system has led us to embark on the development of a new multi-crop, Internet-based, multilingual system. A number of elements of the new system have been completed or prototyped. Its key concepts include the use of a mediated architecture, centralised object-oriented databases, and Internet-based mapping software.

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We developed "PDA Based Support System to Diagnose Crop Disease" as the system of applying PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) to agricultural sector, which supports workers to diagnose crop pathological conditions in the field. This system is a web based client/server system, which adopts database of crop pathology that is open to the public on the web and consists of web, mail and mailinglist. The web functions in this system used by workers consists of "Log of Crop Pathology Occurring" which makes reference to and shows the log of crop disease occurring, "List of On-requesting to Diagnose Crop Pathology" which administers the mail of on-requesting to diagnose crop disease, "Mailinglist" which makes reference to and shows mailinglist's log and "External DB Link" which makes reference to and shows external disease database.

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Most agricultural information systems in rural areas have allowed only the one-way flow of information related to weather, market conditions, and cultivation techniques, to be searched and read via fax or internet by people working in the field of agriculture. However, the internet is in essence interactive, and has the advantage that information resources in various formats can be shared. It is very important to create a new type of agricultural system for rural areas that takes advantage of these features. In the present study, we have developed a resource sharing manage-ment system as such a new type of system. This system allows the following management possibilities: (1)information is provided by both farmers and agricultural organizations through a bookkeeping system that uses the internet;
(2)existing software and data resources within the region can be shared; (3)human resources such as vicarious bookkeepers and bookkeeping instructors can be shared; and (4)centralization of these data resources will allow all farmers within a region to use the same system in their management operations.
Moreover, this system gives an interactive ability that allows software to be provided, rather than the conventional method in which users simply receive information that is supplied. This demonstrates the feasibility of creating advanced information services in rural areas through data integration and resource sharing.

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FDBMS (Federated Database Management System), a new trend of DBMS, are capable of integrating several heterogeneous databases, which are managed by their respective rules, for search and queries. FDBMS integrate databases without any changes to the individual databases nor any need to treate another database. Only a few FDBMS, among those recently proposed in the information science field, support heterogeneous attributes.
We have developed a new FDBMS applicable to relational databases, that supports conversions of both schemas and attribute values and thus creation of a global schema, an integration of schemas of individual databases. This FDBMS consists of a GUI support system and a query processor system. The GUI system helps the user produce a global schema. The query processor accepts an SQL statement querying the global schema, converts into several SQL statements querying local tables, and reports the results. This FDBMS trialed in two cases, and its validity has been proved.
Case 1:
"Vegetable and fruit market information databases covering different time periods" The databases have different identification code systems, since they relate to different time periods, and the data structures have also evolved. We performed integrated queries which involved DBs from several time periods.
Case 2:
"Farming System Databases from Different Prefectures" Again, the databases do not share the same schema, rather each has its own rules. We performed integrated queries for information commonly found in these databases without intruding on each DBs control of its local autonomy.

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