Interoperability by design using the StdTrip tool: an a priori approach

A database conceptual schema is a high-level description of how database concepts are organized, typically as a set of classes of objects and their attributes. Triplification is the process by which a database schema, and its instances, are transformed into a RDF dataset. A major step in this process is deciding how to represent database schema concepts in terms of RDF classes and properties. This is done by mapping database concepts to a vocabulary, to be used as the base in which to generate the RDF triples from. The construction of this vocabulary is extremely important, because the more one reuses well known standards, the easier it will be to interlink the result to other existing datasets. Most triplifying engines today provide support to the mechanical process of transforming relational to RDF data. However, to best of our knowledge, none provide user support during the conceptual modeling stage. In this paper, we present StdTrip, a tool that guides users in this process. If possible, the tool promotes the reuse of standard, W3C recommended RDF vocabularies, or otherwise suggests the reuse of vocabularies already adopted by other RDF datasets.