XML-Based Toolkits for the Interoperability of Web Information Systems

Abstract

This chapter presents a methodology and tools framework, called X-TIME, to support data integration via web sites. It is a data model translator toolkit based on a metamodel and XML technology that is aimed at facilitating the design of wrappers, semantic reconciliators or mediators. X-TIME is an adaptable semantics-oriented metamodel approach that takes into account important characteristics of interoperable information systems, including extensibility and composability. Extensibility requires a translation scheme that can easily integrate new data models while composability, which is the ability of an application to define dynamically the subset of data sources it needs, requires on-demand translation among a subset of data models. To meet these requirements, X-TIME is based on an extensible metamodel that defines a set of metatypes for representing meta-level semantic descriptors of data models that can be found in web sites. The metatypes are organized in a generalization hierarchy to capture semantic similarities between modeling concepts and correlate constituent data models of interoperable systems.