Transforming relational model to source ontology for data integration

Abstract

Data integration can be made scalable, flexible and interoperable if the source descriptions are represented in conceptual model i.e., ontology. Ontology is a shared and common understanding of a domain and can solve the heterogeneity of distributed data sources. The methodology provided in this paper transforms database relations of a local source to OWL based ontology for source descriptions. It minimizes the effort and errors involved in manual ontology building. Compared with existing techniques the distinguished feature of the proposed technique is to build ontology in the absence of necessary metadata from physical or logical models. Results of the proposed methodology are provided to show the transformation is correct (i.e., total, injective).