Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 9
On Evaluating Schema Matching and Mapping
Zohra Bellahsene, Angela Bonifati, Fabien Duchateau, and Yannis Velegrakis
Abstract
The increasing demand of matching and mapping tasks in modern inte-
gration scenarios has led to a plethora of tools for facilitating these tasks. While the
plethora made these tools available to a broader audience, it led to some form of
confusion regarding the exact nature, goals, core functionalities, expected features,
and basic capabilities of these tools. Above all, it made performance measurements
of these systems and their distinction a difficult task. The need for design and
development of comparison standards that will allow the evaluation of these tools
is becoming apparent. These standards are particularly important to mapping and
matching system users, since they allow them to evaluate the relative merits of the
systems and take the right business decisions. They are also important to mapping
system developers, since they offer a way of comparing the system against com-
petitors, and motivating improvements and further development. Finally, they are
important to researchers as they serve as illustrations of the existing system limi-
tations, triggering further research in the area. In this work, we provide a generic
overview of the existing efforts on benchmarking schema matching and mapping
tasks. We offer a comprehensive description of the problem, list the basic compar-
ison criteria and techniques, and provide a description of the main functionalities
and characteristics of existing systems.
Z. Bellahsene
University of Montpellier II, 34000 Montpellier, France
e-mail:
bella@lirmm.fr
A. Bonifati (
B
)
ICAR-CNR, Italy
e-mail:
bonifati@icar.cnr.it
F. Duchateau
CWI, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail:
fabien@cwi.nl
Y. Velegrakis
University of Trento, Trento, Italy
e-mail:
velgias@disi.unitn.eu
