基于关系数据库的OWL本体建模技术的研究
摘要
语义Web是新一代互联网标准,实现语义Web需要大量的领域本体。把目前WWW上数量巨大的数据库中的数据转换成本体形式,是构建语义Web本体的重要途径之一。用手工的方法实现这种转换,既费时又容易出错,而在数据库与本体之间建立映射关系,实现前者到后者之间的自动转换,对于快速增加语义Web上的本体数量具有重要意义。基于结构化数据的本体学习技术可以从数据库系统中自动提取本体,在基于关系数据库的本体学习方法中,对关系模式的本体建模是一项基础工作。现有的方法中存在以下问题：一是对关系模式所包含的语义表达不充分；二是仅在数据模式与本体之间建立映射关系,没有考虑元组转换的语义保持问题。
本文提出了两种互补的从关系数据库到OWL本体的转换方法：语义分析转换法和直接描述转换法。语义分析转换法从关系数据库中读取出关系模式,应用逆向工程技术方法将其转换成EER模型,再将EER模型的语义要素映射成OWL语义要素。对于关系模式的一些语义要素在OWL中不能直接表达的,自定义语义要素与之对应。在完成关系模式的转换的基础上再进行元组的转换。在关联表元组的迁移过程中,分别处理关联关系和自身属性两种语义。直接描述转换法用OWL对关系数据库的层次结构进行描述,形成的本体是对数据库的多层描述。对抽象关系数据库的描述为第一层,对关系模式和元组的描述分别为二、三层。这种方法还描述了关系数据库的结构约束,保证了原系统的数据完整性。这两种方法既研究了关系模式转换又研究了元组的转换。本文最后通过原型系统验证了两种方法的转换规则的有效性。
The Semantic Web is a new standard of Internet. To realize the semantic Web, a number of domain ontologies are needed. It is an important way of constructing the semantic Web ontologies for ones to translate a large number of the data in databases on the Web into the format of ontology. Such a manual translation is time-consuming and many errors may arise. By means of the rules of mapping between databases and ontologies, databases can be transformed into the ontologies automatically. It is very important for the quick increase of the ontologies in the semantic Web. The techniques of ontology learning based on structural data can get ontologies from databases automatically. In the ontology learning based on relational databases, ontology modeling of relational schema is the first step. But the existing approaches have the following problems:one is that the semantics in relational schema cannot be expressed adequately; another one is that the mapping from relational schema to the ontologies is considered only, and the semantics-preserving migration of tuples receives few attention.
This thesis proposes two complementary approaches that can translate relational databases to the ontologies, namely, semantics-analyzing translation and directly-describing translation. For the former, the relational schema is fetched firstly from the relational database and is further recovered to EER model utilizing the technology of reverse engineering. Then the semantic elements in the EER model are mapped into the elements in the OWL. For the semantic elements in the relational schema that cannot be represented directly by the OWL, some semantic elements are particularly defined in the OWL. On the basis, the tuples are translated, in which the semantics of both participation and attributes of tuples are considered. For the directly-describing translation, the structure of relational databases is described and the multiple levels of ontologies are created. The first level of ontologies is about the abstract of relational database. The second and third levels of ontologies are about the relational schema and tuples, respectively. In these processes, the data integrity of relational database are preserved as more as possible by describing the constraints existed in the relational database structure. The two approaches proposed in the thesis consider both the translation of relational schema and tuples. Finally, the thesis develops the prototype that validates the rules given in these approaches.
本文提出了两种互补的从关系数据库到OWL本体的转换方法：语义分析转换法和直接描述转换法。语义分析转换法从关系数据库中读取出关系模式,应用逆向工程技术方法将其转换成EER模型,再将EER模型的语义要素映射成OWL语义要素。对于关系模式的一些语义要素在OWL中不能直接表达的,自定义语义要素与之对应。在完成关系模式的转换的基础上再进行元组的转换。在关联表元组的迁移过程中,分别处理关联关系和自身属性两种语义。直接描述转换法用OWL对关系数据库的层次结构进行描述,形成的本体是对数据库的多层描述。对抽象关系数据库的描述为第一层,对关系模式和元组的描述分别为二、三层。这种方法还描述了关系数据库的结构约束,保证了原系统的数据完整性。这两种方法既研究了关系模式转换又研究了元组的转换。本文最后通过原型系统验证了两种方法的转换规则的有效性。
The Semantic Web is a new standard of Internet. To realize the semantic Web, a number of domain ontologies are needed. It is an important way of constructing the semantic Web ontologies for ones to translate a large number of the data in databases on the Web into the format of ontology. Such a manual translation is time-consuming and many errors may arise. By means of the rules of mapping between databases and ontologies, databases can be transformed into the ontologies automatically. It is very important for the quick increase of the ontologies in the semantic Web. The techniques of ontology learning based on structural data can get ontologies from databases automatically. In the ontology learning based on relational databases, ontology modeling of relational schema is the first step. But the existing approaches have the following problems:one is that the semantics in relational schema cannot be expressed adequately; another one is that the mapping from relational schema to the ontologies is considered only, and the semantics-preserving migration of tuples receives few attention.
This thesis proposes two complementary approaches that can translate relational databases to the ontologies, namely, semantics-analyzing translation and directly-describing translation. For the former, the relational schema is fetched firstly from the relational database and is further recovered to EER model utilizing the technology of reverse engineering. Then the semantic elements in the EER model are mapped into the elements in the OWL. For the semantic elements in the relational schema that cannot be represented directly by the OWL, some semantic elements are particularly defined in the OWL. On the basis, the tuples are translated, in which the semantics of both participation and attributes of tuples are considered. For the directly-describing translation, the structure of relational databases is described and the multiple levels of ontologies are created. The first level of ontologies is about the abstract of relational database. The second and third levels of ontologies are about the relational schema and tuples, respectively. In these processes, the data integrity of relational database are preserved as more as possible by describing the constraints existed in the relational database structure. The two approaches proposed in the thesis consider both the translation of relational schema and tuples. Finally, the thesis develops the prototype that validates the rules given in these approaches.
引文
1. Grigoris Antoniou, Frankvan Harmelen. A semantic Web primer. The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England.
2. Protege. http://protege.stanford.edu. August 2007.
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6. Yuan An, John Mylopoulos, Alex Borgida. Building Semantic Mappings from Databases to Ontologies. American Association for Artificial Intelligence,2006.
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8. Yuan An, Alexander Borgida, John Mylopoulos. Refining Semantic Mappings from Relational Tables to Ontologies. SWDB 2004, LNCS 3372, pp.84-90,2005.
9. Quang Trinh, Ken Barker, Reda Alhajj. RDB2ONT:A Tool for Generating OWL Ontologies From Relational Database Systems. AICT/ICIW 2006 0-7695-2522-9/06.
10. Kashyap V. Design and creation of ontologies for environmental information retrieval. In:Proc. of the Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition, Modeling and Management.1999.
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12. Rudi Studer, V. Richard Benjamins, dieter Fensel. Knowledge Engineering: Principles and Methods. Data and Knowledge Engineering,1998,25(1-2), 161-197.
13.杜小勇,李曼,王珊.本体学习研究综述.Journal of Software, Vol.17, No.9, September 2006, pp.1837-1847.
14. Sean Bechhofer, Frank van Harmelen, Jim Hendler. OWL Web Ontology Language Reference. W3C Recommendation 10 February 2004. http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-ref-20040210.
15. Dave Beckett, Brian McBride. RDF/XML Syntax Specification (Revised). W3C Recommendation 10 February 2004. http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-grammar.
16. Peter F. Patel-Schneider, Patrick Hayes, Ian Horrocks. OWL Web Ontology Language Semantics and Abstract Syntax.W3C Recommendation 10 February 2004. http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-absyn.
17. Frank Manola, Eric Miller. RDF Primer. W3C Recommendation 10 February 2004. http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-primer-20040210.
18. S. Spaccapietra, C. Parent, C. Vangenot, N. Cullot. On Using Conceptual Modeling for Ontologies. Supported by the MICS NCCR funded by FNRS in Switzerland, under grant number 5005-67322.
19. Ramanathan S, Hodges J. Reverse engineering relational schemas to object-oriented schemas. Technical Report, MSU-960701, Mississippi State University,1996.
20. Mustafa Jarrar, Jan Demey, Robert Meersman. On Using Conceptual Data Modeling for Ontology Engineering. Journal On Data Semantics, LNCS 2800,pp. 185-207,2003.
21. A. Halevy, Z. Ives, D. Suciu, and I. Tatarinov. Schema Mediation in Peer Data Management Systems. In Proceedings of International Conferenceon Data Engineering,2003.
22 A. Doan, J. Madhavan, P. Domingos, and A. Halevy. Learning to Map Between Ontologies on the Semantic Web. In Proceedings of the eleventh international conference on World Wide Web, pages662-673, New York, NY, USA,2002. ACM Press.
23.高海茹,李智,陈清阳.MySQL网络数据库技术精粹.北京：机械工业出版社,2002,20-139.
24.(美)王保罗著；杜一民,赵小燕译.Java面向对象程序设计.北京：清华大学出版社,2003,208-249.
25. OWL API. http://owlapi.sourceforge.net. August,2007.
2. Protege. http://protege.stanford.edu. August 2007.
3. Pellet, http://pellet.owldl.com. August,2007.
4. A.Doan, J. Madhavan, P. Domingos, and A. Halevy. Learning to Map Between Ontologies on the Semantic Web. In WWW'02:Proceedings of the eleventh international conference on World Wide Web, pages 662-673, New York, NY, USA,2002, AcM Press.
5. Stojanovic L, Stojanovic N, Volz R. Migrating data-intensive web sites into the semantic Web. In:Proc. of the 17th ACM Symp. on Applied Computing. New York:ACM Press,2002.1100-1107.
6. Yuan An, John Mylopoulos, Alex Borgida. Building Semantic Mappings from Databases to Ontologies. American Association for Artificial Intelligence,2006.
7. Yuan An, Alex Borgida, John Mylopoulos. Inferring Complex Semantic Mappings Between Relational Tables and Ontologies from Simple. CoopIS/DOA/ODBASE 2005, LNCS3761,pp.1152-1169,2005.
8. Yuan An, Alexander Borgida, John Mylopoulos. Refining Semantic Mappings from Relational Tables to Ontologies. SWDB 2004, LNCS 3372, pp.84-90,2005.
9. Quang Trinh, Ken Barker, Reda Alhajj. RDB2ONT:A Tool for Generating OWL Ontologies From Relational Database Systems. AICT/ICIW 2006 0-7695-2522-9/06.
10. Kashyap V. Design and creation of ontologies for environmental information retrieval. In:Proc. of the Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition, Modeling and Management.1999.
11. Astrova I. Reverse engineering of relational database to ontologies. In:Davies J, et al, eds. Proc. of the ESWC 2004. Heidelberg:Springer-Verlag,2004.327-341.
12. Rudi Studer, V. Richard Benjamins, dieter Fensel. Knowledge Engineering: Principles and Methods. Data and Knowledge Engineering,1998,25(1-2), 161-197.
13.杜小勇,李曼,王珊.本体学习研究综述.Journal of Software, Vol.17, No.9, September 2006, pp.1837-1847.
14. Sean Bechhofer, Frank van Harmelen, Jim Hendler. OWL Web Ontology Language Reference. W3C Recommendation 10 February 2004. http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-ref-20040210.
15. Dave Beckett, Brian McBride. RDF/XML Syntax Specification (Revised). W3C Recommendation 10 February 2004. http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-grammar.
16. Peter F. Patel-Schneider, Patrick Hayes, Ian Horrocks. OWL Web Ontology Language Semantics and Abstract Syntax.W3C Recommendation 10 February 2004. http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-absyn.
17. Frank Manola, Eric Miller. RDF Primer. W3C Recommendation 10 February 2004. http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-primer-20040210.
18. S. Spaccapietra, C. Parent, C. Vangenot, N. Cullot. On Using Conceptual Modeling for Ontologies. Supported by the MICS NCCR funded by FNRS in Switzerland, under grant number 5005-67322.
19. Ramanathan S, Hodges J. Reverse engineering relational schemas to object-oriented schemas. Technical Report, MSU-960701, Mississippi State University,1996.
20. Mustafa Jarrar, Jan Demey, Robert Meersman. On Using Conceptual Data Modeling for Ontology Engineering. Journal On Data Semantics, LNCS 2800,pp. 185-207,2003.
21. A. Halevy, Z. Ives, D. Suciu, and I. Tatarinov. Schema Mediation in Peer Data Management Systems. In Proceedings of International Conferenceon Data Engineering,2003.
22 A. Doan, J. Madhavan, P. Domingos, and A. Halevy. Learning to Map Between Ontologies on the Semantic Web. In Proceedings of the eleventh international conference on World Wide Web, pages662-673, New York, NY, USA,2002. ACM Press.
23.高海茹,李智,陈清阳.MySQL网络数据库技术精粹.北京：机械工业出版社,2002,20-139.
24.(美)王保罗著；杜一民,赵小燕译.Java面向对象程序设计.北京：清华大学出版社,2003,208-249.
25. OWL API. http://owlapi.sourceforge.net. August,2007.