SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR ALIGNING DATA TABLES TO DOMAIN ONTOLOGIES

• US 20200134092A1
• Filed: 10/30/2018
• Published: 04/30/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 10/30/2018
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: KPMG LLP (KPMG International Cooperative)
• Original Assignee: KPMG LLP (KPMG International Cooperative)
• Inventors: YANOSY, JR., John A., WICHER, Christopher
• Granted Patent: US 11,188,585 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/22 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/367 Ontology
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/86 Mapping to a database

Abstract

Systems and methods disclosed herein provide for semantically aligning data tables, controlled domain vocabularies, and domain ontologies. Embodiments of the systems and methods provide for aligning the data tables, controlled domain vocabularies, and domain ontologies based on a proxy table ontology representing a physical syntactical structure of the data table.

Claims

1. A system for aligning a data table to a domain ontology, the system comprising:

a processor, wherein the processor is configured to;

receive the data table;

generate a proxy table ontology based on the received data table, wherein the proxy table ontology represents a physical syntactical structure of the data table, wherein the physical syntactical structure identifies headings associated with columns and rows of the data table;

map the data table to the proxy table ontology to generate a first combined ontology, wherein labels associated with a plurality of data cells of the data table are mapped to the identified headings;

align the first combined ontology with a controlled domain vocabulary to generate a second combined ontology, wherein the aligning includes semantically matching the identified headings with corresponding labels in the controlled domain vocabulary;

align the second combined ontology with a domain ontology to generate a third combined ontology, wherein the aligning includes semantically mapping a domain concept defined in the controlled domain vocabulary to an ontology class defined in the domain ontology; and

populate the third combined ontology with table content from the received data table.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the processor is an OWL 2 Web Ontology Language reasoning engine.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the aligning of the first combined ontology with the controlled domain vocabulary includes asserting simple knowledge organization system (SKOS) mapping relationships between the identified headings and the ontology class defined in the domain ontology.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the aligning of the second combined ontology with the domain ontology includes asserting simple knowledge organization system (SKOS) mapping relationships between the domain concept defined in the controlled domain vocabulary and the corresponding labels in the controlled domain vocabulary.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the controlled domain vocabulary is selected out of a plurality of controlled domain vocabularies based on a semantic coverage of the identified headings.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the control domain vocabularies with the highest semantic coverage of the identified headings are automatically discovered and presented to a user for selection.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the controlled domain vocabulary defines a plurality of terms in the domain ontology.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the first, second, and third combined ontologies are stored as resource description framework triple assertions in respective ontology knowledge bases.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the third combined ontology is populated with table content from the received data table upon receiving user approval for at least one of the first, second, and third combined ontologies.

10. A method for aligning a data table to a domain ontology, the method comprising:

receiving, at a processor, the data table;

generating, with the processor, a proxy table ontology based on the received data table, wherein the proxy table ontology represents a physical syntactical structure of the data table, wherein the physical syntactical structure identifies headings associated with columns and rows of the data table;

mapping, with the processor, the data table to the proxy table ontology to generate a first combined ontology, wherein labels associated with a plurality of data cells of the data table are mapped to the identified headings;

aligning, with the processor, the first combined ontology with a controlled domain vocabulary to generate a second combined ontology, wherein the aligning includes semantically matching the identified headings with corresponding labels in the controlled domain vocabulary;

aligning, with the processor, the second combined ontology with a domain ontology to generate a third combined ontology, wherein the aligning includes semantically mapping a domain concept defined in the controlled domain vocabulary to an ontology class defined in the domain ontology; and

populating, with the processor, the third combined ontology with table content from the received data table.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the aligning of the first combined ontology with the controlled domain vocabulary includes asserting simple knowledge organization system (SKOS) mapping relationships between the identified headings and the ontology class defined in the domain ontology.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein the aligning of the second combined ontology with the domain ontology includes asserting simple knowledge organization system (SKOS) mapping relationships between the domain concept defined in the controlled domain vocabulary and the corresponding labels in the controlled domain vocabulary.

13. The method of claim 10, wherein the controlled domain vocabulary is selected out of a plurality of controlled domain vocabularies based on a semantic coverage of the identified headings.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the control domain vocabularies with the highest semantic coverage of the identified headings are automatically discovered and presented to a user for selection.

15. The method of claim 10, wherein the controlled domain vocabulary defines a plurality of terms in the domain ontology.

16. The method of claim 10, wherein the first, second, and third combined ontologies are stored as resource description framework triple assertions in respective ontology knowledge bases.

17. The method of claim 10, wherein the third combined ontology is populated with table content from the received data table upon receiving user approval for at least one of the first, second, and third combined ontologies.

18. A system for aligning a data table to a domain ontology, the system comprising:

a client device, wherein the client device is configured to receive the data table;

at least one server, wherein the at least one server is configured to store a plurality of domain ontologies and the corresponding ontology knowledge bases; and

a processor, wherein the processor is configured to;

receive the data table from the client device;

generate a proxy table ontology based on the received data table, wherein the proxy table ontology represents a physical syntactical structure of the data table, wherein the physical syntactical structure identifies headings associated with columns and rows of the data table;

map the data table to the proxy table ontology to generate a first combined ontology, wherein labels associated with a plurality of data cells of the data table are mapped to the identified headings;

align the first combined ontology with a controlled domain vocabulary to generate a second combined ontology, wherein the aligning includes semantically matching the identified headings with corresponding labels in the controlled domain vocabulary;

align the second combined ontology with a domain ontology to generate a third combined ontology, wherein the aligning includes semantically mapping a domain concept defined in the controlled domain vocabulary to an ontology class defined in the domain ontology; and

populate the third combined ontology with table content from the received data table.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the at least one server includes a knowledge repository server, wherein the client device is configured to access the ontology knowledge bases via SPARQL queries to the knowledge repository server.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein the first, second, and third combined ontologies are stored as resource description framework triple assertions in respective ontology knowledge bases in the knowledge repository server.