Ontology-based entity matching in attributed graphs

Abstract

Keys for graphs incorporate the topology and value constraints needed to uniquely identify entities in a graph. They have been studied to support object identification, knowledge fusion, and social network reconciliation. Existing key constraints identify entities as the matches of a graph pattern by subgraph isomorphism, which enforce label equality on node types. These constraints can be too restrictive to characterize structures and node labels that are syntactically different but semantically equivalent. We propose a new class of key constraints, Ontological Graph Keys (OGKs) that extend conventional graph keys by ontological subgraph matching between entity labels and an external ontology. We show that the implication and validation problems for OGKs are each NP-complete. To reduce the entity matching cost, we also provide an algorithm to compute a minimal cover for OGKs. We then study the entity matching problem with OGKs, and a practical variant with a budget on the matching cost. We develop efficient algorithms to perform entity matching based on a (budgeted) Chase procedure. Using real-world graphs, we experimentally verify the efficiency and accuracy of OGK-based entity matching.