SASMINT System for Database Interoperability in Collaborative Networks

In most suggested systems aiming to enable interoperability and collaboration among heterogeneous databases,

schema matching

and

integration

is performed manually. The SASMINT system introduced in this paper proposes a (semi-) automated approach to tackle the following: 1) identification of the syntactic/semantic/structural similarities between the donor and recipient schemas to resolve their heterogeneities, 2) suggestion of corresponding mappings among the pairs of matched components, 3) facilitation of user-interaction with the system, necessary for validation/enhancement of results, and 4) generation of a proposed integrated schema, and a set of derivation rules for each of its components to support query processing against integrated sources. Unlike other systems that typically apply one specific algorithm, SASMINT applies a hybrid approach for schema matching that combines a selection of algorithms from NLP and graph theory. Furthermore, SASMINT exploits the user-validated schema matching results in its semi-automatic generation of the integrated schema and its necessary derivations.