Ontologies are a well-affirmed way of representing complex structured information and they provide a sound conceptual foundation to Semantic Web technologies. On the other hand, a huge amount of information available on the web is stored in legacy relational databases. The issues raised by the collaboration between such worlds are well known and addressed by consolidated mapping languages. Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, a best practice for such cooperation is missing: in this work we thus present a method to guide the definition of cooperations between ontology-based and relational databases systems. Our method, mainly based on ideas from knowledge reuse and re-engineering, is aimed at the separation of data between database and ontology instances and at the definition of suitable mappings in both directions, taking advantage of the representation possibilities offered by both models. We present the steps of our method along with guidelines for their application. Finally, we propose an example of its deployment in the context of a large repository of bio-medical images we developed.
A method and guidelines for the cooperation of ontologies and relational databases in Semantic Web applications
Bozzato, Loris;
2012-01-01
Abstract
Ontologies are a well-affirmed way of representing complex structured information and they provide a sound conceptual foundation to Semantic Web technologies. On the other hand, a huge amount of information available on the web is stored in legacy relational databases. The issues raised by the collaboration between such worlds are well known and addressed by consolidated mapping languages. Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, a best practice for such cooperation is missing: in this work we thus present a method to guide the definition of cooperations between ontology-based and relational databases systems. Our method, mainly based on ideas from knowledge reuse and re-engineering, is aimed at the separation of data between database and ontology instances and at the definition of suitable mappings in both directions, taking advantage of the representation possibilities offered by both models. We present the steps of our method along with guidelines for their application. Finally, we propose an example of its deployment in the context of a large repository of bio-medical images we developed.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
