132 Int. J. Economics and Business Research, Vol. 11, No. 2, 2016 Copyright © 2016 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Data freshness evaluation in data integration systems Zina Houhamdi* College of Engineering and Information Technology, Department of Software Engineering, Al Ain University of Science and Technology, Al Ain, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Email: zina.houhamdi@aau.ac.ae *Corresponding author Belkacem Athamena College of Business Administration, Department of Management Information Systems, Al Ain University of Science and Technology, Al Ain, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Email: belkacem.athamena@aau.ac.ae Abstract: The availability of data in different datasources increases highly the demand on accessing this data in a uniform and generalised way, especially in decision making applications which require an exhaustive investigation and examination of the data. The data quality represents an essential characteristic requested by the users, particularity with the arrival of the data integration systems (DIS) which integrate data from multiple datasources and present them to the users as single database. This paper discusses the data quality evaluation in DIS systems. Precisely; it addresses the issues of the quality evaluation of the data delivered to the end users as results to their queries and the verification of the achievement of users’ quality expectations. Besides, it analyses how to improve the DIS systems by using quality scales and to enforce data quality. We propose to study one quality attribute, to analyse its effect in a DIS system, and to suggest methods for its assessment. Between the quality attributes that have been defined, this paper investigates the more significant one which is data freshness. Keywords: data integration systems; DIS; data quality; data freshness. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Houhamdi, Z. and Athamena, B. (2016) ‘Data freshness evaluation in data integration systems’, Int. J. Economics and Business Research, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp.132–144. Biographical notes: Zina Houhamdi is an Associate Professor at the Department of Software Engineering, Al Ain University of Science and Technology, UAE. Her research work has been published in several academic journals and has been presented to scientific conferences. Her research areas of interest are data quality, agent-oriented software engineering, software testing, goal-oriented methodology, software modelling and analysis, Petri nets, and formal methods. Belkacem Athamena is an Associate Professor at the Department of Management Information Systems, Al Ain University of Science and Technology, UAE. His main research interest is in system and software