A Fundamental Framework for Realizing Semantic Interoperability in a Multidatabase Environment

Abstract

In multidatabase research, the realization of semantic interoperability is the most important issue for resolving semantic heterogeneity between different databases. In this paper, we propose a fundamental framework for realizing semantic interoperability at the level of semantic relationships between data items in a multi database environment. We present a metadatabase system which extracts the significant information from different databases. The metadatabase system uses a mathematical model of meaning to dynamically recognize the semantic equivalence, similarity, and difference between data items. The essential feature of this model is that the specific meaning of a data item is dynamically fixed and unambiguously recognized according to the context by semantic interpretation mechanisms.