Ontology-Based Querying of Linked XML Documents
Abstract:
We investigate the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) that provides a powerful means to link distributed data collections into an entity searchable as a single collection. Besides the linking mechanism, LDAP offers a rich collection of modeling primitives required to express ontologies as a common searchable interface. Encouraged in addition by the fact that XML has become the de facto standard for information interchange on the Internet, LGAccess, our global querying system, combines ontologies and XML into a unified LDAP-based framework to improve the power for accessing related XML data in the network. We describe a global query evaluation strategy based on expressive links among entities that are spread across different local or remote servers. Also, the way ontologies are annotated to hold such network-aware links along with semantic annotations is shown. Built on grounds of the standard and well-established LDAP technology instead of the technologies that are still in the process of adoption by the community, our system is an ideal candidate for applications that need to interact with semistructured databases at a global extent.
Slides: [postscript] [pdf]