Deriving Sub-schema Similarities from Semantically Heterogeneous XML Sources

In this paper we propose a semi-automatic technique for deriving similarities between XML sub-schemas. The proposed technique is specific for XML, almost automatic and light. It consists of two phases: the former one selects the most promising pairs of sub-schemas; the latter one examines them and returns only the similar ones. In the paper we discuss some possible applications that can benefit of derived sub-schema similarities and we illustrate some experiments we have conducted for testing the validity of our approach. Finally, a comparison of the proposed approach with some related ones already presented in the literature, as well as a real example case aiming at better clarifying it, are presented.