Interoperability in Information Schemas Ruben Mendes Orientador: Prof. José Borbinha MEIC-Tagus Instituto Superior Técnico

Introduction Information Systems – Complex and heterogeneous Environment – Many inter-related applications – Exchange and Store Information XML – Human Readable Text Representation of Information – Dominant Standart used to Transmit and Store Information XML Schemas Languages – Define the Structure of an XML Document XSLT – Used to Transform XML Documents – Rule-Based Language

The Problem - Motivation XSLT language is too much procedural for a transformation language – Reducing the potential of being used in other scenarios. – Human experts have to generate complex transformations written in XSLT that specify the relationship between schemas How can we better represent the mappings in order to retrieve the valuable information in one XSLT? How can that information be analyzed and manipulated? What value can that information generate?

The Problem - Motivation ANSWER: Create a Conceptual Representation from an XML transformation coded in XSLT. – Written in a declarative language with higher level of abstraction – Separates the design of the relationship between schemas from its implementation – Allows mappings to be manipulated and analyzed on a more objective level

The Problem - Perspectives Those conceptual representations can be analyzed and may be used for: – Creating visual mapping representations suitable for human analysis – Compare two different transformations – Debugging XSLT transformations – Expand or update the definition of a XML schema – Updating an XSLT – Convert to other legacy transformation languages(eg. SQL, Xquery)

Related Work XML Transformation Languages – XSLT Alternatives( eg. Xquery, Xstream, Higher-Level TL) Ontology Matching – Specifies the mapping between two different ontologies – Ontology Mapping Languages(SWRL, OWL) – Frameworks (eg. MAFRA,Coma++) – Semantic Bridges encapsulate all the necessary information to transform the instances from a source ontology to a target ontology

Related Work XSLT Static Analysis – XSL Processors Improvements – Searching for Input and Output nodes – Extracting Node Dependencies Schema Mapping Between XML Documents – Semi-Automated Mapping Frameworks (eg. Clio, Clip) – Validation of Mappings

Proposed Solution - Requirements Repox Framework – Data Aggregation and Interoperability Manager XMAP – Mapping Language used by REPOX Framework – Declarative Language with XML syntax – Uses Semantic Bridges to describe the relations between two schemas REPOX <xmap:mapping-model xmlns:xmap="&xmap;" xmlns:s1="&s1;" xmlns:s2="&s2;" id=" XMAP Language Syntax Example

Proposed Solution - Architecture

Work Plan

Risks There will exist XSLT mappings rules that will be very hard to convert – Some rules may need user interaction/feedback. Pareto Principle – Implementing 80% of the solution costs 20% of time – Implementing the remain 20% may cost more than 80% of the time.

Thank You For Your Attention Questions?