Database Schema Detection and Mapping on Mobile Applications: an Ontology-based Approach

摘要

In the growing field of Mobile Information Systems, there is a need for systems architectures that facilitate access to heterogeneous information components to guarantee the availability of information stored in databases. A mobile system should access different databases depending on user characteristics (e.g. GPS localization, user profile, user preferences). The semantic understanding of information, by means of understanding the database schema, will allow the extraction of the essential information for mobile applications. In this work we present a framework to detect the essential DB schema from heterogeneous spatial databases and GISs. The detection DB schema is used for a federated architecture. A model for assessing semantic similarities by means of ontologies, is applied to the mapping between the schema required for the application and the essential schema. The paper describes the components of the framework and proposes XML-based technology.