Representation and Reasoning About Changing Semantics in Heterogeneous Data Sources

16 Pages Posted: 17 Aug 2004

See all articles by Hongwei (Harry) Zhu

Hongwei (Harry) Zhu

University of Massachusetts Lowell

Stuart Madnick

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Sloan School of Management

Michael Siegel

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Sloan School of Management

Date Written: August 2004

Abstract

Changes of semantics in data sources further complicate the semantic heterogeneity problem. We identify four types of semantic heterogeneities related to changing semantics and present a solution based on an extension to the Context Interchange (COIN) framework. Changing semantics is represented as multi-valued contextual attributes in a shared ontology; however, only a single value is valid over a certain time interval. A mediator, implemented in abductive constraint logic programming, processes the semantics by solving temporal constraints for single-valued time intervals and automatically applying conversions to resolve semantic differences over these intervals. We also discuss the scalability of the approach and its applicability to the Semantic Web.

Keywords: semantic heterogeneity problem, Context Interchange (COIN) framework

Suggested Citation

Zhu, Hongwei and Madnick, Stuart E. and Siegel, Michael, Representation and Reasoning About Changing Semantics in Heterogeneous Data Sources (August 2004). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=577242 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.577242

Hongwei Zhu (Contact Author)

University of Massachusetts Lowell ( email )

One University Avenue
Lowell, MA 01854
United States

Stuart E. Madnick

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Sloan School of Management ( email )

E53-321
Cambridge, MA 02142
United States
617-253-6671 (Phone)
617-253-3321 (Fax)

Michael Siegel

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Sloan School of Management ( email )

E53-323
Cambridge, MA 02142
United States
617-253-2937 (Phone)
617-258-7579 (Fax)

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