A Classification of Schema-Based Matching Approaches

Schema/ontology matching is a critical problem in many application domains, such as, Semantic Web, schema/ontology integration, data warehouses, e-commerce, catalog matching, etc. Many diverse solutions to the matching problem have been proposed so far. In this paper we present a taxonomy of schema-based matching techniques that builds on the previous work on classifying schema matching approaches. Some innovations are in introducing new criteria which distinguish between matching techniques relying on diverse semantic clues. In particular, we distinguish between heuristic and formal techniques at schema-level; and implicit and explicit techniques at element- and structure-level. Based on the classification proposed we overview some of the recent schema/ontology matching systems pointing which part of the solution space they cover.