A multi-database access system with instance matching

Abstract

Organizations that use several separately-developed information systems face a common problem. The data which are used by different systems have no standard. Different databases that keep information of same entity instances use different representations. Attribute names are different. Attribute values are different. Even unique identifiers which are used to identify object instances are different. Yet the data need to be referred to and used by some mission-critical applications. This paper presents a multi-database instance matching system which is developed to bring data from separate sources that refer to different unique identifiers and attribute details. Entity resolution techniques are employed to match the database instances. After matched entity instances are identified, an ontology is used to keep the matched identifiers. Queries from the users then refer to the ontology and are rewritten to refer to the correct instances of the original database.