8. A computer system comprising: a data storage medium; a network interface for communicating between said data storage medium and said data sources; a user interface in communication with said network interface and said data storage medium; wherein said computer system implements a computer program for searching and retrieving data from said plurality of heterogeneous data sources, the program comprising: a configure element for communicating with each data source, wherein each data source has at least one associated data source type or data source owner; a data source owner of said at least one data source uses meta-data information to pre-configure data of said data source based on said data source type or data source owner; said configure element is configured to configure and select at least one data source from which to retrieve data; the selection is based on said pre-configured data of said data source type or data source owner; a search element for communicating with the configure element and each selected data source, said search element configured to retrieve said data from at least one of the heterogeneous data sources in accordance with a task request; a search translator for each data source, to communicate with both the configure element and the search element; wherein said data storage medium stores at least the retrieved data; said user interface is configured to allow a user to provide said request and view said retrieved data; wherein each of said search translators is associated with one of said data source type or data source owner; wherein each of said search translators verifies that a search request syntax provided by said search element is appropriate to its corresponding data source type or data source owner; and wherein said search translators are selected from a group consisting of SQL translators, X-QUERY translators, XPATH translators, and Directory SDK for Java translators.
10. The system according to claim 8 , wherein said data comprises only a portion of a data record available within said data source.