An evidential approach to query interface matching on the deep Web

作者：Hong Jun^*; He Zhongtian; Bell David A

来源：Information Systems, 2010, 35(2): 140-148.

DOI：10.1016/j.is.2009.08.004

• Query interface matching
• Schema matching
• Deep Web data integration
• Evidential reasoning
• Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence

Matching query interfaces is a crucial step in data integration across multiple Web databases. The problem is closely related to schema matching that typically exploits different features of schemas. Relying on a particular feature of schemas is not sufficient. We propose an evidential approach to combining multiple matchers using Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence. First, our approach views the match results of an individual matcher as a source of evidence that provides a level of confidence on the validity of each candidate attribute correspondence. Second, it combines multiple sources of evidence to get a combined mass function that represents the overall level of confidence, taking into account the match results of different matchers. Our combination mechanism does not require the use of weighing parameters, hence no setting and tuning of them is needed. Third, it selects the top k attribute correspondences of each source attribute from the target schema based on the combined mass function. Finally it uses some heuristics to resolve any conflicts between the attribute correspondences of different source attributes. Our experimental results show that our approach is highly accurate and effective.

• 出版日期2010-4