Abstract
Integrating and accessing data stored in autonomous, distributed and heterogeneous data sources have been recognized as of great importance to small and huge-scale businesses. Enhancing the accessibility and the reusability of these data entail the development of new approaches for data sharing. These approaches should satisfy a minimal set of criteria in order to support the development of effective and comprehensive data sharing applications. In this paper, we first outline the four data sharing approaches and define a set of fundamental criteria for data sharing approach. Moreover, we investigate the motivation and importance of these criteria, and the inter-dependencies among them.