Cheng Hian Goh
Abstract
The Context Interchange strategy presents a novel perspective for mediated data access in which semantic conflicts among heterogeneous systems are not identified a priori, but are detected and reconciled by a context mediator through comparison of contexts axioms corresponding to the systems engaged in data exchange. In this article, we show that queries formulated on shared views, export schema, and shared “ontologies” can be mediated in the same way using the Context Interchange framework. The proposed framework provides a logic-based object-oriented formalsim for representing and reasoning about data semantics in disparate systems, and has been validated in a prototype implementation providing mediated data access to both traditional and web-based information sources.
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Index Terms
- Context interchange: new features and formalisms for the intelligent integration of information
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Reviews
Kristian Torp
Semantic interoperability among heterogeneous data sources is complicated if there are semantic conflicts between the data sources. The goal is that, when one user has made a declarative specification of how data are interpreted and how conflicts should be resolved, a mediator should automatically detect and reconcile semantic conflicts in a way that is transparent to all other users. The paper presents the Context Interchange strategy for integrating heterogeneous data sources (that is, both traditional sources and Web sources). The strategy is based on a well-founded logical framework that is both deductive and object-oriented. The framework has three main components: a domain model consisting of rich semantic types, elevation axioms for handling identity and integrity constraints, and context axioms for allowing alternative interpretation of semantic objects. The three main components of the Context Interchange framework are mapped to Horn clauses. These clauses provide a formal logical basis that allows for the automatic mediation of queries on heterogeneous data sources. Abductive logic programming is used in the mediation. A prototype implementation demonstrates the practical validity of the theoretical framework. The paper is well written and use s a good running example.
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