Schema Matching - Impediments To Schema Matching

Impediments To Schema Matching

Among others, common challenges to automating matching and mapping have been previously classified in especially for relational DB schemas; and in - a fairly comprehensive list of heterogeneity not limited to the relational model recognizing schematic vs semantic differences/heterogeneity. Most of these heterogeneities exist because schemas use different representations or definitions to represent the same information (schema conflicts); OR different expressions, units, and precision result in conflicting representations of the same data (data conflicts). Research in schema matching seeks to provide automated support to the process of finding semantic matches between two schemas. This process is made harder due to heterogeneities at the following levels

• Syntactic heterogeneity - differences in the language used for representing the elements
• Structural heterogeneity - differences in the types, structures of the elements
• Model / Representational heterogeneity – differences in the underlying models (database, ontologies) or their representations (relational, object-oriented, RDF,OWL)
• Semantic heterogeneity - where the same real world entity is represented using different terms or vice-versa