An ontology based approach to the integration of entity-relationship schemas

Abstract

In schema integration, schematic discrepancies occur when data in one database correspond to metadata in another. We explicitly declare the context that is the meta information relating to the source, classification, property etc. of entities, relationships or attribute values in entity-relationship (ER) schemas. We present algorithms to resolve schematic discrepancies by transforming metadata into the attribute values of entity types, keeping the information and constraints of original schemas. Although focusing on the resolution of schematic discrepancies, our technique works seamlessly with the existing techniques resolving other semantic heterogeneities in schema integration. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.