“Information Systems Integration and Evolution: Ontologies at Rescue”, Carlo A. Curino, Letizia Tanca, Carlo Zaniolo International Workshop on Semantic Technologies for System Maintenance (STSM) 2008
The life of a modern Information System is often char-
acterized by (i) a push toward integration with other sys-
tems, and (ii) the evolution of its data management core
in response to continuously changing application require-
ments. Most of the current proposals dealing with these is-
sues from a database perspective rely on the formal notions
of mapping and query rewriting. This paper presents the
research agenda of ADAM (Advanced Data And Metadata
Manager); by harvesting the recent theoretical advances in
this area into a unified framework, ADAM seeks to deliver
practical solutions to the problems of automatic schema
mapping and assisted schema evolution. The evolution of
an Information System (IS) reflects the changes occurring in
the application reality that the IS is modelling: thus, ADAM
exploits ontologies to capture such changes and provide
traceability and automated documentation for such evolu-
tion. Initial results and immediate benefits of this approach
are presented.