What is schema matching?
Schema matching is the technique of identifying objects that are semantically related. In other words, schema matching is a method of finding the correspondence between the concepts of different distributed, heterogeneous data sources.
Schema matching is considered to be one of the basic operations for schema integration and data processing. It has been recognized by a large number of applications as a fundamental technique for customizing various data representations.
Schema matching does not have a unique or universal solution because identifying the semantics of schema objects is an extremely difficult, time consuming and highly intelligent process. Schema matching is a very subjective technique.
There are several schema matching techniques such as:
- Linguistic agreement
- Instance-based matching
- Structure-based matching
- Constraint-based matching
- Hybrid customization
- Rule-based matching
At the moment, the schema comparison is carried out manually, although this has considerable limitations. When done manually, schema matching is very time consuming and may not be feasible, especially in dynamic environments or large evolving schemas. In many cases, experts do not fully agree with the end results of schema matching techniques.
Many applications use the schema comparison. In the case of databases, matching the schema is the first step in generating a view definition and a program. Knowledge-based applications that use schema matching help align ontologies. Web applications and healthcare use schema matching to align records and reports. Schema matching also supports e-commerce in order to coordinate different message formats with one another.
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