Semantic-Based Mappings

Data translation consists of the task of moving data from a source database to a target database. This task is usually performed by developing mappings, i.e., executable transformations from the source to the target schema. However, it is often the case that a richer description of the target database semantics is available under the form of a conceptual schema. We investigate how the mapping process changes when such a rich conceptualization of the target database is available. As a major contribution, we develop a translation algorithm that automatically rewrites a mapping from the source database schema to the target conceptual schema into an equivalent mapping from the source schema to the underlying target database schema. Experiments show that our approach scales nicely to complex conceptual schemas and large databases.