US Patent 7113939 Architecture to enable search gateways as part of federated search

An architecture to enable search gateways as part of a federated search supports searching for data in one or more heterogeneous data sources. The one or more heterogeneous data sources are within a computer system. Initially, a request for data is received at a federated data source. From the federated data source, data is retrieved from one or more of one or more terminal data repositories or one or more search gateway data sources.