An Ontology-Based Framework for Heterogeneous Data Sources Integration

Abstract

Ontologies have been extensively used to model domain-specific knowledge. The main reason for this success is due to their capability to be at the “semantic” level, away from data structures and implementation strategies. In addition, ontology formalisms have allowed certain kinds of reasoning to be automated within a reasonable time complexity. Due to ontology data independence and automated reasoning, ontologies are well suited for integrating heterogeneous databases, enabling interoperability among isparate systems, and specifying interfaces to independent, knowledge-based services.