Ontological Approach to Integrate Semantically Related Databases

Interoperability and integration of data sources are becoming ever more challenging issues with the increase in both the amount of data and the number of data producers. Interoperability not only has to resolve the differences in data structures, it also has to deal with semantic heterogeneity. Taking semantically heterogeneous databases as the prototypical situation, this paper describes how ontology (in the traditional metaphysical sense) can contribute to delivering a more efficient and effective process of matching by providing a framework for the analysis, and so the basis for a methodology. It delivers not only a better process for matching, but the process also gives a better result.