A framework for integrating and transforming between ontologies and relational databases

Bridging the gap between ontologies, expressed in the Web Ontology Language (OWL), and relational databases is a necessity for realising the Semantic Web vision. Relational databases are considered a good solution for storing and processing ontologies with a large amount of data. Moreover, the vast majority of current websites store data in relational databases, and therefore being able to generate ontologies from such databases is important to support the development of the Semantic Web. Most of the work concerning this topic has either (1) extracted an OWL ontology from an existing relational database that represents as exactly as possible the relational schema, using a limited range of OWL modelling constructs, or (2) extracted a relational database from an existing OWL ontology, that represents as much as possible the OWL ontology. By way of contrast, this thesis proposes a general framework for transforming and mapping between ontologies and databases, via an intermediate low-level Hyper-graph Data Model. The transformation between relational and OWL schemas is expressed using directional Both-As-View mappings, allowing a precise definition of the equivalence between the two schemas, hence data can be mapped back and forth between them. In particular, for a given OWL ontology, we interpret the expressive axioms either as triggers, conforming to the Open-World Assumption, that performs a forward-chaining materialisation of inferred data, or as constraints, conforming to the Closed-World Assumption, that performs a consistency checking. With regards to extracting ontologies from relational databases, we transform a relational database into an exact OWL ontology, then enhance it with rich OWL 2 axioms, using a combination of schema and data analysis. We then apply machine learning algorithms to rank the suggested axioms based on past users’ relevance. A proof-of-concept tool, OWLRel, has been implemented, and a number of well-known ontologies and databases have been used to evaluate the approach and the OWLRel tool.Open Acces

A Pattern Based Approach for Re-engineering Non-Ontological Resources into Ontologies

With the goal of speeding up the ontology development process, ontology engineers are starting to reuse as much as possible available ontologies and non-ontological resources such as classification schemes, thesauri, lexicons and folksonomies, that already have some degree of consensus. The reuse of such non-ontological resources necessarily involves their re-engineering into ontologies. Non-ontological resources are highly heterogeneous in their data model and contents: they encode different types of knowledge, and they can be modeled and implemented in different ways. In this paper we present (1) a typology for non-ontological resources, (2) a pattern based approach for re-engineering non-ontological resources into ontologies, and (3) a use case of the proposed approach

MeLinDa: an interlinking framework for the web of data

The web of data consists of data published on the web in such a way that they can be interpreted and connected together. It is thus critical to establish links between these data, both for the web of data and for the semantic web that it contributes to feed. We consider here the various techniques developed for that purpose and analyze their commonalities and differences. We propose a general framework and show how the diverse techniques fit in the framework. From this framework we consider the relation between data interlinking and ontology matching. Although, they can be considered similar at a certain level (they both relate formal entities), they serve different purposes, but would find a mutual benefit at collaborating. We thus present a scheme under which it is possible for data linking tools to take advantage of ontology alignments.Comment: N° RR-7691 (2011

Publishing Linked Data - There is no One-Size-Fits-All Formula

Publishing Linked Data is a process that involves several design decisions and technologies. Although some initial guidelines have been already provided by Linked Data publishers, these are still far from covering all the steps that are necessary (from data source selection to publication) or giving enough details about all these steps, technologies, intermediate products, etc. Furthermore, given the variety of data sources from which Linked Data can be generated, we believe that it is possible to have a single and uni�ed method for publishing Linked Data, but we should rely on di�erent techniques, technologies and tools for particular datasets of a given domain. In this paper we present a general method for publishing Linked Data and the application of the method to cover di�erent sources from di�erent domains

A Shared Ontology Approach to Semantic Representation of BIM Data

Architecture, engineering, construction and facility management (AEC-FM) projects involve a large number of participants that must exchange information and combine their knowledge for successful completion of a project. Currently, most of the AEC-FM domains store their information about a project in text documents or use XML, relational, or object-oriented formats that make information integration difficult. The AEC-FM industry is not taking advantage of the full potential of the Semantic Web for streamlining sharing, connecting, and combining information from different domains. The Semantic Web is designed to solve the information integration problem by creating a web of structured and connected data that can be processed by machines. It allows combining information from different sources with different underlying schemas distributed over the Internet. In the Semantic Web, all data instances and data schema are stored in a graph data store, which makes it easy to merge data from different sources. This paper presents a shared ontology approach to semantic representation of building information. The semantic representation of building information facilitates finding and integrating building information distributed in several knowledge bases. A case study demonstrates the development of a semantic based building design knowledge base

Использование онтологий для построения семантических запросов в реляционных базах данных

На сьогодні всесвітня павутина є найбільшим сховищем інформації. Проте для використання цієї інформації потрібна людина. Мета Семантичного Вебу — представити інформацію у вигляді, придатному для машинної обробки. Він забезпечує можливість спільного доступу до даних, а також їх повторного використання. Велика частина інформації у всесвітній павутині зберігається в реляційних базах даних. Семантичний Веб не може їх використовувати безпосередньо, але реляційні бази даних можуть бути використані для побудови онтологій. Ця ідея привернула увагу багатьох дослідників, які запропонували алгоритми та відповідні програмні рішення для автоматичного або напівавтоматичного вилучення структурованої синтаксичної інформації. У цій роботі досліджено існуючі рішення, показано різні підходи до формалізації логічної моделі реляційної бази даних і перетворення цієї моделі в OWL (мова Семантичного Вебу). Відзначено проблеми розглянутих рішень, а також виділено аспекти, які необхідно враховувати в майбутньому.Nowadays, the Web is the biggest existing information repository. However, to operate with its information human action is required, but the Semantic Web aims to change this. It provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application, allowing more uses than the traditional Web. Most of the information on the Web is stored in relational databases and the Semantic Web cannot use such databases. Relational databases can be used to construct ontology as the core of the Semantic Web. This task has attracted the interest of many researches, which have made algorithms (wrappers) able to extract structured syntactic information in an automatic or semi-automatic way. At our work we drew experience from those works. We showed different approaches of formalization of a logic model of relational databases, and a transformation of that model into OWL, a Semantic Web language. We closed this paper by mentioning some problems that have only been lightly touched by database to ontology mapping solutions as well as some aspects that need to be considered by future approaches.На сегодняшний день всемирная паутина является крупнейшим хранилищем информации. Тем не менее для использования этой информации необходим человек. Цель Семантического Веба — представить информацию в виде пригодном для машинной обработки. Он обеспечивает возможность совместного доступа к данным, а также их повторного использования. Большая часть информации во всемирной паутине хранится в реляционных базах данных. Семантический Веб не может их использовать непосредственно, но реляционные базы данных могут быть применены для построения онтологий. Эта идея привлекла интерес многих исследователей, которые предложили алгоритмы и соответствующие программные решения для автоматического или полуавтоматического извлечения структурированной синтаксической информации. В этой работе исследованы существующие решения, показаны различные подходы к формализации логической модели реляционной базы данных и преобразования этой модели в OWL (язык Семантического Веба). Отмечены проблемы рассмотренных решений, а также выделены аспекты, которые необходимо учитывать в будущем