Supporting Ontology-based Semantic Matching in RDBMS

Abstract

Ontologies are increasingly being used to build applications that utilize domain-specific knowledge. This paper addresses the problem of supporting ontology-based semantic matching in RDBMS. Specifically, 1) A set of SQL operators, namely ONT_RELATED, ONT_EXPAND, ONT_DISTANCE, and ONT_PATH, are introduced to perform ontology-based semantic matching, 2) A new indexing scheme ONT_INDEXTYPE is introduced to speed up ontology-based semantic matching operations, and 3) System-defined tables are provided for storing ontologies specified in OWL. Our approach enables users to reference ontology data directly from SQL using the semantic match operators, thereby opening up possibilities of combining with other operations such as joins as well as making the ontology-driven applications easy to develop and efficient. In contrast, other approaches use RDBMS only for storage of ontologies and querying of ontology data is typically done via APIs. This paper presents the ontology-related functionality including inferencing, discusses how it is implemented on top of Oracle RDBMS, and illustrates the usage with several database applications.

Semantic-Based Top-k Retrieval for Competence Management

“…[21], a system for skills and knowledge management developed by Data Over Ontological Models s.r.l. 7 as a commercial solution implementing the skill matching framework designed in [6]. The efficiency and scalability of the approach has been tested using the skill ontology underlying I.M.P.A.K.T.…”

“…Using the system, both recruiters and candidates refers to the same model of the domain knowledge. Several approaches ( [7], [22], [3], [16]) have been presented in which databases allow users and applications to access both ontologies and other structured data in a seamless way. A possible optimization consists in caching the classification hierarchy in the database and to provide tables maintaining all the subsumption relationships between primitive concepts.…”

Enhancing Keyword Search Over Relational Databases Using Ontologies

“…In [11] a method to support ontology-based semantic matching in RDBMS was presented. This approach makes ontology-based semantic matching available as part of SQL by creating set of new operators, namely ONT_RELATED, ONT_EXPAND, ONT_DISTANCE, and ONT_PATH.…”

A Framework for Fuzzy Ontology Storing onto Relational Database within an a Priori Data Integration System

“…In [14] the OWL-DL ontology is stored along with its instances in tables defined by the relational database system to prevent the loss of information. The transformation presented in [15] is based on a set of rules that specify how to map each construction in ontology to a corresponding structure in an Object-Relational database.…”