Schema integration based on uncertain semantic mappings

  • Authors:

  • Matteo Magnani;Nikos Rizopoulos;Peter Mc.Brien;Danilo Montesi

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer Science, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy;Department of Computing, Imperial College London, London, UK;Department of Computing, Imperial College London, London, UK;Department of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Camerino, Camerino (MC), Italy

  • Venue:
  • ER'05 Proceedings of the 24th international conference on Conceptual Modeling
  • Year:
  • 2005

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Schema integration is the activity of providing a unified representation of multiple data sources. The core problems in schema integration are: schema matching, i.e. the identification of correspondences, or mappings, between schema objects, and schema merging, i.e. the creation of a unified schema based on the identified mappings. Existing schema matching approaches attempt to identify a single mapping between each pair of objects, for which they are 100% certain of its correctness. However, this is impossible in general, thus a human expert always has to validate or modify it. In this paper, we propose a new schema integration approach where the uncertainty in the identified mappings that is inherent in the schema matching process is explicitly represented, and that uncertainty propagates to the schema merging process, and finally it is depicted in the resulting integrated schema.