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Query Translation for Mediators over Ontology-Based Information Sources

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Methods and Applications of Artificial Intelligence (SETN 2002)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 2308))

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Abstract

We propose a model for providing integrated and unified access to multiple information sources. Each source comprises: (a) an ontology i.e. a set of terms structured by a subsumption relation, and (b) a database that stores descriptions of objects using terms of the ontology. We assume that different sources may use different ontologies, i.e., different terminologies withterms that correspond to different natural languages or to different levels of granularity. Information integration is obtained through a mediator comprising two parts: (a) an ontology, and (b) a set of articulations to the sources, where an articulation to a source is a set of relationships between terms of the mediator and terms of that source. Information requests (queries) are addressed to the mediator whose task is to analyze each query into sub-queries, send them to the appropriate sources, then combine the results to answer the original query. We study the querying and answering process in this model and we focus on query translation between the mediator and the sources.

Work partially conducted while this author was visiting at the National Technical University of Athens, supported by the PENED/GGET project.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of CreteInstitute of Computer Science, ICS-FORTH, Greece

    Yannis Tzitzikas & Panos Constantopoulos

  2. ICS-FORTH, Institute of Computer Science, Greece

    Yannis Tzitzikas & Panos Constantopoulos

  3. Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique, Université de Paris-Sud, France

    Nicolas Spyratos

Authors
  1. Yannis Tzitzikas
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  2. Nicolas Spyratos
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  3. Panos Constantopoulos
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Informatics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54006, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Ioannis P. Vlahavas

  2. N.C.S.R. “Demokritos”, Inst. of Informatics & Telecommunications Software and Knowledge Engineering Lab, 15310, Aghia Paraskevi, Greece

    Constantine D. Spyropoulos

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© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Tzitzikas, Y., Spyratos, N., Constantopoulos, P. (2002). Query Translation for Mediators over Ontology-Based Information Sources. In: Vlahavas, I.P., Spyropoulos, C.D. (eds) Methods and Applications of Artificial Intelligence. SETN 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2308. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-46014-4_38

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-46014-4_38

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-43472-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46014-5

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