Ontological View-Driven Semantic Integration in Open Environments
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Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 9-20-2010 12:00 AM Ontological View-driven Semantic Integration in Open Environments Yunjiao Xue The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Hamada H. Ghenniwa The University of Western Ontario Joint Supervisor Weiming Shen The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Electrical and Computer Engineering A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Yunjiao Xue 2010 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Computer Engineering Commons Recommended Citation Xue, Yunjiao, "Ontological View-driven Semantic Integration in Open Environments" (2010). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 16. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/16 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Ontological View-driven Semantic Integration in Open Environments (Spine title: Ontological View-driven Semantic Integration in Open Environments) (Thesis format: Monograph) by Yunjiao Xue Graduate Program in Engineering Science Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Yunjiao Xue 2010 THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO SCHOOL OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES CERTIFICATE OF EXAMINATION Supervisor Examiners ______________________________ ______________________________ Dr. Hamada H. Ghenniwa Dr. Yong Zeng ______________________________ Co-Supervisor Dr. Robert E. Mercer ______________________________ ______________________________ Dr. Weiming Shen Dr. Miriam A. M. Capretz Supervisory Committee ______________________________ Dr. Quazi M. Rahman ______________________________ The thesis by Yunjiao Xue entitled: Ontological View-driven Semantic Integration in Open Environments is accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Date__September_20, 1010_________ _______________________________ Chair of the Thesis Examination Board Abstract In an open computing environment, such as the World Wide Web or an enterprise Intranet, various information systems are expected to work together to support information exchange, processing, and integration. However, information systems are usually built by different people, at different times, to fulfil different requirements and goals. Consequently, in the absence of an architectural framework for information integration geared toward semantic integration, there are widely varying viewpoints and assumptions regarding what is essentially the same subject. Therefore, communication among the components supporting various applications is not possible without at least some translation. This problem, however, is much more than a simple agreement on tags or mappings between roughly equivalent sets of tags in related standards. Industry-wide initiatives and academic studies have shown that complex representation issues can arise. To deal with these issues, a deep understanding and appropriate treatment of semantic integration is needed. Ontology is an important and widely accepted approach for semantic integration. However, usually there are no explicit ontologies with information systems. Rather, the associated semantics are implied within the supporting information model. It reflects a specific view of the conceptualization that is implicitly defining an ontological view. This research proposes to adopt ontological views to facilitate semantic integration for information systems in open environments. It proposes a theoretical foundation of ontological views, practical assumptions, and related solutions for research issues. The proposed solutions mainly focus on three aspects: the architecture of a semantic integration enabled environment, ontological view modeling and representation, and semantic equivalence relationship discovery. ii The solutions are applied to the collaborative intelligence project for the collaborative promotion / advertisement domain. Various quality aspects of the solutions are evaluated and future directions of the research are discussed. Keywords Semantic integration, ontology, ontological view, open environment, frame, modeling, representation, semantic relationship discovery, tree similarity-based, instance-based iii Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Hamada H. Ghenniwa for guiding my PhD study at The University of Western Ontario (UWO). In the past four years I have had an amazing experience working with you. Your deep insight into the research problems that we are interested in and unique view on the problems always inspire me and drive me into deeper thinking and analysis. Completely understanding the problem and finding solutions to solve it. This is the most important methodology I have learned from you. Also, thank you for providing me so many opportunities and suggestions in terms of my career after graduation. Second, I want to thank my co-supervisor, Dr. Weiming Shen, for everything you offered to help me grow. My life was totally changed when you and Dr. Ghenniwa decided to accept me as a student in your research group four years ago. That decision created a bridge for me to come to Canada and start my new research at the UWO. In the following years, you helped me build my research, gain experience from the projects conducted at the National Research Council Canada (NRC), and design my career life as a researcher. I will never forget all the valuable suggestions you gave me. What you and Dr. Ghenniwa have done for me shows me what the best supervisor would be. Third, I must thank NRC and EK3 for providing me many working opportunities, and thank the UWO and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) for providing financial support for my research. I need to thank all the colleagues in the Cooperative Distributed Systems Engineering (CDS-EnG) group, NRC, and EK3 Technologies Inc. (EK3). I had the pleasure of working with these wise people who inspired my thinking through many discussions and collaborative projects. Here is a list of names that I would like to mention: Chun, Daisy, Abdul, Raafat, Wafa, Mohamed, Sherif, Fujun, Adrian, Mohammad, Abdou and Hamil from CDS-EnG; Qi, Shuying, Brian, Henry, Xiaoping, Jie and Mert from NRC; David, Joe, Kevin, Lingling, Ziyard, iv Weiping, Shawn, Lihua, Adam, Justin, Steven, Zhan, Joseph, Wajid, Ed, Ken and Nick from EK3. Last but not least, I thank my parents, Mr. Huimin Xue and Mrs. Jie Zhong. You gave me life at the beginning and support in every moment. Without these there would be nothing that I could achieve. I also want to thank a special girl in my life, Jessie Wang. You cheered me up when I was fighting to complete the thesis. It is so wonderful to have your support in this and all the later stages. v Table of Contents CERTIFICATE OF EXAMINATION .................................................................................................... i Abstract .................................................................................................................................................. ii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................. iv Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................ vi List of Tables ........................................................................................................................................ ix List of Figures ........................................................................................................................................ x Chapter 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2 Literature Review .......................................................................................................... 6 2.1 Semantic Integration from A Cognitive Science Perspective .......................................... 6 2.1.1 Cognitive Science .................................................................................................. 6 2.1.2 Architecture of Cognition ...................................................................................... 7 2.1.3 From Cognitive Science to Semantic Integration .................................................. 9 2.1.4 Process Model of Semantic Integration ............................................................... 10 2.2 A General Architecture for Semantic Integration .......................................................... 14 2.3 Schema-based Structural Approaches ........................................................................... 15 2.3.1 Schema Integration Fundamentals ....................................................................... 16 2.3.2 Schema Matching Fundamentals ......................................................................... 17 2.3.3 Automatic Schema Matching ............................................................................... 18 2.4