Critical Points for Interactive Schema Matching

Experience suggests that fully automated schema matching is infeasible, especially for n-to-m matches involving semantic functions. It is therefore advisable for a matching algorithm not only to do as much as possible automatically, but also to accurately identify the critical points where user input is maximally useful. Our matching algorithm combines several existing approaches, with a new emphasis on using the context provided by the way elements are embedded in paths. A prototype tested on biological data (gene sequence, DNA, RNA, etc.) and on bibliographic data, shows significant performance improvements from user feedback and context checking. In non-interactive mode on the purchase order schemas, it compares favorably with COMA, the most mature schema matching system in literature, and also correctly identifies critical points for user input.