86 research outputs found
Data integration through service-based mediation for web-enabled information systems
The Web and its underlying platform technologies have often been used to integrate existing software and information systems. Traditional techniques for data representation and transformations between documents are not sufficient to support a flexible and maintainable data integration solution that meets the requirements of modern complex Web-enabled software and information systems. The difficulty
arises from the high degree of complexity of data structures, for example in business and technology applications, and from the constant change of data and its
representation. In the Web context, where the Web platform is used to integrate different organisations or software systems, additionally the problem of heterogeneity
arises. We introduce a specific data integration solution for Web applications such as Web-enabled information systems. Our contribution is an integration technology
framework for Web-enabled information systems comprising, firstly, a data integration technique based on the declarative specification of transformation rules and the construction of connectors that handle the integration and, secondly, a mediator architecture based on information services and the constructed connectors to handle the integration process
Mediated data integration and transformation for web service-based software architectures
Service-oriented architecture using XML-based web services has been widely accepted by many organisations as the standard infrastructure to integrate heterogeneous and autonomous data sources. As a result, many Web service providers are built up on top of the data sources to share the data by supporting provided and required interfaces and methods of data access in a unified manner. In the context of data integration, problems arise when Web services are assembled to deliver an integrated view of data, adaptable to the specific needs of individual clients and providers. Traditional approaches of data integration and transformation are not suitable to automate the construction of connectors dedicated to connect selected Web services to render integrated and tailored views of data. We propose a declarative approach that addresses the oftenneglected data integration and adaptivity aspects of serviceoriented
architecture
Identification of Design Principles
This report identifies those design principles for a (possibly new) query and transformation
language for the Web supporting inference that are considered essential. Based upon these
design principles an initial strawman is selected. Scenarios for querying the Semantic Web
illustrate the design principles and their reflection in the initial strawman, i.e., a first draft of
the query language to be designed and implemented by the REWERSE working group I4
Four Lessons in Versatility or How Query Languages Adapt to the Web
Exposing not only human-centered information, but machine-processable data on the Web is one of the commonalities of recent Web trends. It has enabled a new kind of applications and businesses where the data is used in ways not foreseen by the data providers. Yet this exposition has fractured the Web into islands of data, each in different Web formats: Some providers choose XML, others RDF, again others JSON or OWL, for their data, even in similar domains. This fracturing stifles innovation as application builders have to cope not only with one Web stack (e.g., XML technology) but with several ones, each of considerable complexity. With Xcerpt we have developed a rule- and pattern based query language that aims to give shield application builders from much of this complexity: In a single query language XML and RDF data can be accessed, processed, combined, and re-published. Though the need for combined access to XML and RDF data has been recognized in previous work (including the W3C’s GRDDL), our approach differs in four main aspects: (1) We provide a single language (rather than two separate or embedded languages), thus minimizing the conceptual overhead of dealing with disparate data formats. (2) Both the declarative (logic-based) and the operational semantics are unified in that they apply for querying XML and RDF in the same way. (3) We show that the resulting query language can be implemented reusing traditional database technology, if desirable. Nevertheless, we also give a unified evaluation approach based on interval labelings of graphs that is at least as fast as existing approaches for tree-shaped XML data, yet provides linear time and space querying also for many RDF graphs. We believe that Web query languages are the right tool for declarative data access in Web applications and that Xcerpt is a significant step towards a more convenient, yet highly efficient data access in a “Web of Data”
Completing Queries: Rewriting of IncompleteWeb Queries under Schema Constraints
Reactive Web systems, Web services, and Web-based publish/
subscribe systems communicate events as XML messages, and in
many cases require composite event detection: it is not sufficient to react
to single event messages, but events have to be considered in relation to
other events that are received over time.
Emphasizing language design and formal semantics, we describe the
rule-based query language XChangeEQ for detecting composite events.
XChangeEQ is designed to completely cover and integrate the four complementary
querying dimensions: event data, event composition, temporal
relationships, and event accumulation. Semantics are provided as
model and fixpoint theories; while this is an established approach for rule
languages, it has not been applied for event queries before
Web and Semantic Web Query Languages
A number of techniques have been developed to facilitate
powerful data retrieval on the Web and Semantic Web. Three categories
of Web query languages can be distinguished, according to the format
of the data they can retrieve: XML, RDF and Topic Maps. This article
introduces the spectrum of languages falling into these categories
and summarises their salient aspects. The languages are introduced using
common sample data and query types. Key aspects of the query
languages considered are stressed in a conclusion
RDF Querying
Reactive Web systems, Web services, and Web-based publish/
subscribe systems communicate events as XML messages, and in
many cases require composite event detection: it is not sufficient to react
to single event messages, but events have to be considered in relation to
other events that are received over time.
Emphasizing language design and formal semantics, we describe the
rule-based query language XChangeEQ for detecting composite events.
XChangeEQ is designed to completely cover and integrate the four complementary
querying dimensions: event data, event composition, temporal
relationships, and event accumulation. Semantics are provided as
model and fixpoint theories; while this is an established approach for rule
languages, it has not been applied for event queries before
Development of Use Cases, Part I
For determining requirements and constructs appropriate for a Web query language, or in fact
any language, use cases are of essence. The W3C has published two sets of use cases for XML
and RDF query languages. In this article, solutions for these use cases are presented using
Xcerpt. a novel Web and Semantic Web query language that combines access to standard Web
data such as XML documents with access to Semantic Web metadata
such as RDF resource
descriptions with reasoning abilities and rules familiar from logicprogramming.
To the
best knowledge of the authors, this is the first in depth study of how to solve use cases for
accessing XML and RDF in a single language: Integrated access to data and metadata
has been
recognized by industry and academia as one of the key challenges in data processing for the
next decade. This article is a contribution towards addressing this challenge by demonstrating
along practical and recognized use cases the usefulness of reasoning abilities, rules, and
semistructured
query languages for accessing both data (XML) and metadata
(RDF)
Modular Web Queries — From Rules to Stores
Even with all the progress in Semantic technology, accessing Web
data remains a challenging issue with new Web query languages and approaches
appearing regularly. Yet most of these languages, including W3C approaches
such as XQuery and SPARQL, do little to cope with the explosion of the data
size and schemata diversity and richness on the Web. In this paper we propose
a straightforward step toward the improvement of this situation that is simple to
realize and yet effective: Advanced module systems that make partitioning of (a)
the evaluation and (b) the conceptual design of complex Web queries possible.
They provide the query programmer with a powerful, but easy to use high-level
abstraction for packaging, encapsulating, and reusing conceptually related parts
(in our case, rules) of a Web query. The proposed module system combines ease
of use thanks to a simple core concept, the partitioning of rules and their consequences
in flexible “stores”, with ease of deployment thanks to a reduction
semantics. We focus on extending the rule-based Semantic Web query language
Xcerpt with such a module system though the same approach can be applied to
other (rule-based) languages as well
- …