Automatically generating a semantic mapping for a relational database

• US 10,445,300 B2
• Filed: 06/23/2015
• Issued: 10/15/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 05/30/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Hu, Gang, Mei, Jing, Shen, Wei Jia, Sun, Wen B., Xie, Guo Tong
• Primary Examiner(s): Morrison, Jay A
• Assistant Examiner(s): Caiado, Antonio J
• Application Number:
  US14/747,092
• Publication Number:
  US 20150347471A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,575 Days
• Field of Search: 707780, 707763, 707791, 707793, 707795, 707796, 707802, 707803, 707807, 707810, 706 58
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/211 Schema design and management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/284 Relational databases
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/86 Mapping to a database
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9024 Graphs; Linked lists G06F16/9027 takes precedence

Abstract

A method for automatically generating a semantic mapping for a relational database RDB includes obtaining a first semantic mapping from a first RDB to an ontology of linked data; obtaining a schema mapping from the first RDB to a second RDB; and generating a second semantic mapping from the second RDB to the ontology of the linked data based on the first semantic mapping and the schema mapping.

Claims

1. A method for automatically generating a semantic mapping for a relational database (RDB), the method comprising:

obtaining, via a processor, a first semantic mapping from a first RDB to an ontology of linked data;

obtaining, via the processor, a schema mapping from the first RDB to a second RDB; and

generating, via the processor, a second semantic mapping from the second RDB to the ontology of the linked data based on the first semantic mapping and the schema mapping, the generating comprising;

obtaining, via the processor, an internal model representation regarding the first semantic mapping based on the first semantic mapping, wherein the internal model representation is a graph, wherein the first semantic mapping is composed of a resource description framework (RDF) triple, wherein the RDF triple comprises a subject, a predicative, and an object, wherein the obtaining the internal model representation regarding the first semantic mapping based on the first semantic mapping comprises expressing the subject and object of the RDF triple as nodes on the graph and expressing the predicative of the RDF triple as an edge on the graph, and wherein the object is expressed as a blank node in the graph responsive to the object being literal information;

obtaining an internal model representation regarding the schema mapping based on the schema mapping;

synthesizing the internal model representation regarding the first semantic mapping and the internal model representation regarding the schema mapping to obtain a synthesized internal model representation of mappings, wherein the first semantic mapping and the schema mapping are synthesized by graph traversal; and

compiling the synthesized internal model representation of the mappings to obtain the second semantic mapping;

wherein the first semantic mapping for the RDB causes the processor to access data in the first and the second RDB with enhanced efficiency and the compiling the synthesized internal model representation of the mappings to obtain the second semantic mapping comprises;

performing graph traversal on the synthesized graphic structure representation of mappings to obtain the second semantic mapping.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the obtaining an internal model representation regarding the schema mapping based on the schema mapping comprises:

expressing a schema mapping name in the schema mapping as a node on the graph;

expressing a table-name.column-name of the first RDB and a table-name.column-name of the second RDB as nodes on the graph;

in response to the table-name.column-name of the first RDB and the table-name.column-name of the second RDB in the schema mapping sharing a same variable symbol, directing a node corresponding to the schema mapping name to an association node through an edge, wherein the association node is directed to nodes corresponding to the table-name.column-name of the first RDB and the table-name.column-name of the second RDB, respectively.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the synthesizing the internal model representation regarding the first semantic mapping and the internal model representation regarding the schema mapping to obtain a synthesized internal model representation of mappings comprises:

performing graph traversal on the internal model representation regarding the first semantic mapping and the graphic structure representation regarding the schema mapping, to obtain a synthesized internal model representation of mappings.