Ontology-based metadata dictionary for integrating Heterogeneous Information Sources on the WWW

Semantic heterogeneity has always been one of the most important problems to overcome. A number of systems have been proposed to address this problem, ranging from mediator-based systems to description logic-based systems to content-descriptive metadata systems. In this paper, we propose an ontology-based metadata dictionary as a basis for solving semantic heterogeneity. First, the ontology-based metadata dictionary is modeled on the basis of a bottom-up design approach. Next, an XML-based data model is employed to manipulate and express the metadata dictionary contents to demonstrate how the proposed ontology-based metadata dictionary can be applied to a practical implementation. We also present the transformation of the ontology-based metadata dictionary into an XML-based metadata dictionary representation. Finally, the proposed approach is applied to a practical case study along with some related query processing to demonstrate the viability of model realisation.