Ontology Evolution and Source Autonomy in Ontology-based Data Warehouses

Ontology-based integration systems (OBIS) use ontologies in order to describe the semantic of sources and to make the content explicit. Two major architectures of OBISs are available: (i) those using an unique ontology, and (ii) those using multiple ontologies. In the first architecture, all sources are related to one shared ontology. This architecture suffers from changes of ontology and sources which can affect the conceptualization of the domain represented in the ontology. Any change in the ontology may affect the sources. Therefore, sources are not really autonomous. In hybrid ontologies, each source is described by its own ontology, called local ontology. Each one references/maps a shared ontology in order to guarantee that each source shares the same vocabulary. The articulation between local ontologies and the shared ontology can be done either a posteriori or a priori. Two major issues are raised in this architecture: (i) evolution of the shared ontology and its consequence on the integrated system, and (ii) autonomy of the ontology and the local schema of each source. In this paper, we propose an approach and a model to manage asynchronous evolution of warehouse integrated systems where the articulation is done in an a priori manner. The fundamental hypothesis of our work, called principle of ontological continuity, supposes that an evolution of an ontology does not make false an axiom that was previously true. This principle allows to manage each old instance using the actual ontology. Therefore, it simplifies significantly the management of the evolution process and allows a complete automation of the whole integration process. Our work is motivated by the automatic integration of catalogs of industrial components in engineering databases. It has been validated by a prototype using ECCO environment and EXPRESS language.

[1]  Craig A. Knoblock,et al.  SIMS: Retrieving and integrating information from multiple sources , 1993, SIGMOD '93.

[2]  Thomas R. Gruber,et al.  A Translation Approach to Portable Ontologies , 1993 .

[3]  Ramez Elmasri,et al.  Schema versioning and database conversion techniques for bi-temporal databases , 1999, Proceedings. Sixth International Workshop on Temporal Representation and Reasoning. TIME-99.

[4]  Ken Barker,et al.  Integrating relational database schemas using a standardized dictionary , 2001, SAC.

[5]  Ladjel Bellatreche,et al.  An a Priori Approach for Automatic Integration of Heterogeneous and Autonomous Databases , 2004, DEXA.

[6]  Farshad Hakimpour,et al.  Global Schema Generation Using Formal Ontologies , 2002, ER.

[7]  Gio Wiederhold,et al.  Mediators in the architecture of future information systems , 1992, Computer.

[8]  Michael L. Dertouzos,et al.  The Computer Age: A Twenty-Year View , 1980 .

[9]  Johann Eder,et al.  Creation and management of versions in multiversion data warehouse , 2004, SAC '04.

[10]  Guy Pierra,et al.  From digital libraries to electronic catalogues for engineering and manufacturing , 2003, Int. J. Comput. Appl. Technol..

[11]  Ladjel Bellatreche,et al.  Base de données à base ontologique: le modèle OntoDB , 2004, BDA.

[12]  Natalya F. Noy,et al.  A Component-Based Framework For Ontology Evolution , 2003 .

[13]  Terry A. Landers,et al.  An Overview of MULTIBASE , 1986, DDB.

[14]  Boris Motik,et al.  Managing Multiple Ontologies and Ontology Evolution in Ontologging , 2002, Intelligent Information Processing.

[15]  Alon Y. Halevy,et al.  Introduction to the special issue on semantic integration , 2004, SGMD.

[16]  Silvana Castano,et al.  Semantic dictionary design for database interoperability , 1997, Proceedings 13th International Conference on Data Engineering.

[17]  Elke A. Rundensteiner,et al.  Multiversion-based view maintenance over distributed data sources , 2004, TODS.

[18]  Jennifer Widom,et al.  The TSIMMIS Project: Integration of Heterogeneous Information Sources , 1994, IPSJ.

[19]  Stéphane Jean,et al.  OntoQL : an exploitation language for OBDBs , 2005 .

[20]  Stuart E. Madnick,et al.  Working Paper Alfred P. Sloan School of Management Database Systems in a Dynamic Environment Database Systems in a Dynamic Environment Received Context Interchange: Overcoming the Challenges of Large-scale Interoperable Database Systems in a Dynamic Environment* , 2022 .

[21]  Stéphane Bressan,et al.  Context Interchange: New Features and Formalisms for the Intelligent Integration of Information Context Interchange: New Features and Formalisms for the Intelligent Integration of Information , 1997 .

[22]  Heiner Stuckenschmidt,et al.  Ontology-Based Integration of Information - A Survey of Existing Approaches , 2001, OIS@IJCAI.

[23]  Martin L. Kersten,et al.  A Graph-Oriented Model for Articulation of Ontology Interdependencies , 1999, EDBT.

[24]  Joann J. Ordille,et al.  The World Wide Web as a Collection of Views: Query Processing in the Information Manifold , 1996, VIEWS.

[25]  Thomas R. Gruber,et al.  A translation approach to portable ontology specifications , 1993, Knowl. Acquis..

[26]  Michel C. A. Klein,et al.  Ontology Evolution: Not the Same as Schema Evolution , 2004, Knowledge and Information Systems.

[27]  Vipul Kashyap,et al.  Managing Multiple Information Sources through Ontologies: Relationship between Vocabulary Heterogeneity and Loss of Information , 1996, KRDB.

[28]  Michael L. Dertouzos,et al.  Computer Science and the Representation of Knowledge , 1980 .

[29]  Ladjel Bellatreche,et al.  Intégration de sources de données autonomes par articulation a priori d'ontologies , 2004, INFORSID.

[30]  Laura M. Haas,et al.  The Garlic project , 1996, SIGMOD '96.