Architecture of a semantic data integration system based on a semantically complete model and a semantically complete query language

Abstract

The availability of numerous sources of structured data on the Internet poses the problem of their integration into a unified information space just as the unstructured data and weakly structured data sources are integrated in the framework of the WWW. The main requirement for such an information space is the simplicity of operation for the users that are not trained IT experts. The architecture of a system of semantic integration of distributed and heterogeneous data sources is proposed in the framework of a unified semantic access interface. The semantic nature of this interface lies in the fact that one can interact with such a system in terms of the concepts of the application domain completely ignoring the implementation details of the systems being integrated. The proposed architecture simplifies the users' work, the integration process, and the development of user forms with a rich functionality including a semantic navigation between the forms. A distinctive feature of this architecture is that the system integration and the development of user forms are performed declaratively in the interactive mode without programming. The simplification of the users' work with the system is achieved due to some special properties of the semantically complete model (SCM) and of the semantically complete query language (SCQL), which provide a basis for the system. A prototype of the system under study is briefly described. The prototype is implemented as a type of the client-server technology based on the SCM-SCQL.