Similarity of DTDs Based on Edit Distance and Semantics

Abstract

Summary. In this paper we propose a technique for evaluating similarity of XML schema fragments. Contrary to existing works we focus on structural level in combination with semantic similarity of the data. For this purpose we exploit the idea of edit distance utilized to constructs of DTDs which enables to express the structural differences of the given data more precisely. In addition, in combination with the semantic similarity it provides more realistic results. Using various experiments we show the behavior and advantages of the proposed approach.