DartGrid: Semantic-based database grid

In presence of web, one critical challenge is how to globally publish, seamlessly integrate and transparently locate geographically distributed database resources with such "open" settings. This paper proposes a semantic-based approach supporting the global sharing of database resources using grid as the platform. We have built a semantic query system, called DartGrid, with the following features: a) database providers are organized as an ontology-based virtual organization; by uniformly defined domain semantics, database could be semantically registered and seamlessly integrated together to provide database service, and b)we raise the level of interaction with the data base system to a domain-cognizant model in which query request are specified in the terminology and knowledge of the domain(s), which enable the users to publish, discovery query databases only at a semantic or knowledge level. We explore the essential and fundamental roles played by data semantics, and implement some innovative semantic functionalities such as semantic browse, semantic query and semantic registration. We also reports on application results from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) that requires data-intensive collaboration.