Spatio-temporal Schema Integration with Validation: A Practical Approach

We propose to enhance a schema integration process with a validation phase employing logic-based data models. In our methodology, we validate the source schemas against the data model; the inter-schema mappings are validated against the semantics of the data model and the syntax of the correspondence language. In this paper, we focus on how to employ a reasoning engine to validate spatio-temporal schemas and describe where the reasoning engine is plugged into our integration methodology. The validation phase distinguishes our integration methodology from other approaches. We shift the emphasis on automation from the a priori discovery to the a posteriori checking of the inter-schema mappings. By doing so, we take advantage of the expressive power of the common data model in the source schema description and inter-schema mapping definition. Database integration has been and continues to be the focus of many research efforts. The integration task involving the spatial and temporal domains becomes even more complex bearing a weak number of formal approaches reported in the literature. In this paper, we describe a hybrid approach exploiting advantages of two formalisms: a spatio-temporal conceptual model and an expressive description logic. The relationships between database conceptual models, in particular the Entity-Relationship (ER) model, and Description Logics (DLs) are addressed in [1, 2], where it is shown that DLs are powerful enough to capture the domain semantics represented by ER based models. In this paper, we present a translation of MADS conceptual data model into a DL formalism. MADS [3] is an object+relationship conceptual data model featuring structural, spatial, temporal, and multiple perceptions dimensions. In our previous paper [4], we presented our integration methodology where MADS is the common data model