The F.B.I. has established 112 separate databases to store information about the case.
Those agencies keep the information in separate databases and they do not communicate efficiently.
That model still exists, with lots of separate databases for Facebook's 900 million users.
Increasingly, formerly separate databases are being combined electronically into larger collections known as data warehouses.
Companies that adopt the best-of-breed approach end up with their information fragmented into hundreds of separate databases.
Today, the C.D.C., the Food and Drug Administration and the Agriculture Department all gather data on food safety in separate databases, making it hard to share data.
Schools often keep information on tests, grades, discipline, finances and teachers in separate databases, and many states are now building data warehouses that enable them to integrate with one another.
As well as the Schengen information system, ministers are looking at three separate databases covering asylum seekers, criminals and non-EU nationals who have applied for visas in the EU's passport-free zone.
The company, he says, has put firewalls in place to separate databases containing federally regulated data, like credit or debt information used for purposes like risk management, from databases about consumers used to generate scores for marketing purposes.
With the laptops, the Internet connection can be slow and spotty in some of areas of the city, and officers have to log in to separate databases with multiple passwords to retrieve information.
The T.I.A. program is the Bush administration's most visible attempt to implement an idea that became ascendent after 9/11: that the best way to catch terrorists is to allow federal agencies to share information about American citizens and aliens that is currently stored in separate databases.
