Semantic schema matching

We view match as an operator that takes two graph-like structures (e.g., XML schemas) and produces a mapping between the nodes of these graphs that correspond semantically to each other. Semantic schema matching is based on the two ideas: (i) we discover mappings by computing semantic relations (e.g., equivalence, more general); (ii) we determine semantic relations by analyzing the meaning (concepts, not labels) which is codified in the elements and the structures of schemas. In this paper we present basic and optimized algorithms for semantic schema matching, and we discuss their implementation within the S-Match system. We also validate the approach and evaluate S-Match against three state of the art matching systems. The results look promising, in particular for what concerns quality and performance. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.