a framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
TRANSCRIPT
CAA 2010
A Framework for transforming archaeologicaldatabases to ontological datasets
Monika [email protected]
Department of Computer Science
Joint work withYi Hong
Department of Computer Science
Lin Foxhall, Alessandro QuerciaSchool of Archaeology and Ancient History
University of Leicester, UK
April 8, 2010Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
From RDBMs to Ontological datasets
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
Tracing Networks
Archaeologists study a wide range of material objects.
By tracking them at every stage of their production,distribution, use, and consumption across a largegeographical region, over a long time period, they cantrace the links between the people who made, used, andtaught others to make them.
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
Tracing Networks
Archaeologists study a wide range of material objects.By tracking them at every stage of their production,distribution, use, and consumption across a largegeographical region, over a long time period, they cantrace the links between the people who made, used, andtaught others to make them.
Pertinent QuestionsHow have individuals or groups of individuals learnt how toorganise themselves?
Why did some prosper while others collapsed?
What are the dynamics of power, influence and theexchange of knowledge?
In what kinds of contexts does innovation appear?
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
Tracing Networks
www.tracingnetworks.ac.uk
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
Tracing Networks: The Semantic web perspective
Build the links through their datasets
www.tracingnetworks.ac.ukMonika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
Tracing Networks: Loomweights
Example dataset for this talk: Loomweight dataset
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
Motivation
Conventional mapping frameworks
provide scripting languages to facilitate the mapping.
apply simplistic mapping rules.
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
Motivation
Realistic scenarios:
the association between columns and properties is farmore complex than a simple one-to-one correspondence.
domain specific schemas to be used for mapping havebeen extended from standard vocabularies or those usedelsewhere.
Loomweights: the ontological instances conform to adomain specific schema, e.g., CIDOC-CRM.
several ontology schemas are used and the data needs tobe suitably mapped to more than one property.
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
The Loomweights Dataset
The column diameter in theRDB table cannot be mappedas a datatype property.
To specify a relationshipbetween diameter and theconcept Loomweight, createintermediate instances ofCIDOC-CRM concepts.
Instances to be contextuallyrelated to each other toensure loomweights areassigned correct diametervalues.
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
Transformation Framework
ORM Reverse Engineering.
ECA Rule-based Transformation.
Ontology Instance Generation.
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
ORM Reverse Engineering
Is used to extract the existing tables, columns, relationships(inc. primary key, foreign key, join etc) and index from aRDBMS to object-oriented data structures or “classes”.
Records in the table can be instantiated as data objectswhich can be easily manipulated and processed usingOOP techniques.
In our proposed approach, the Hibernate ORM ReverseEngineering tool is used to convert database records intoJava objects.
ORM Reverse Engineering → ECA Rule-based Transformation → Ontology Instance Generation
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
ECA Rule-based Transformation
An ECA-based (Event-Condition-Action) textualtransformation language DOTL − Database OntologyTransformation Language.
The fundamental construct of a DOTL transformation ruleis of form:
On Event if Condition Do Action
ORM Reverse Engineering → ECA Rule-based Transformation → Ontology Instance Generation
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
ECA Rule-based Transformation: DOTL
A basic DOTL rule consists of three parts:
The event part specifies the triggers of the transformationrule,
The condition part is a logical expression, which checksthe pre-condition of the action to be carried out. Thedefault conditions is “if undefined”.
The action part usually consists of a series of creation ofnew ontology instances, properties and othercorresponding operations.
ORM Reverse Engineering → ECA Rule-based Transformation → Ontology Instance Generation
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
DOTL rules: Loomweights Database
ORM Reverse Engineering → ECA Rule-based Transformation → Ontology Instance Generation
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
Ontology Instance Generation
The Transfomer builder component is used to build Javasource code based on the pre-defined DOTL rules.
Finally the Transformer Engine component compiles andexecutes the Java code to generate RDF/OWL instances.
The framework exports all data to the RDF store or aspersistent RDF files.
ORM Reverse Engineering → ECA Rule-based Transformation → Ontology Instance Generation
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
Prototype
Java implementation.
The open source Hibernate Reverse Engineeringframework for object/relational mapping.
DOTL Editor plugin for Eclipse: contains an integrated Javacode generator implemented in Xpand.
Formalised EBNF grammar of DOTL defined in Xtext.
Metamodel of the language is described using the EMF(Eclipse Modeling Framework).
Protégé-OWL API for the generation of RDF/OWLinstances.
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
Implementation layers
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
Closely related work
D2RQ, Virtuoso: a declarative language to describemappings between relational database schemata andOWL/RDFS ontologies.
R2O: XML-based language for the transformation.
STAR
TRANSLATION
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
Summary
A transformation framework for migrating large volumes ofarchaeological data stored in RDBs to ontology based datasets on the Semantic Web.
The ECA-based scripting language DOTL, which allowsthe specification of complex transformation rules from dataobjects to ontologies.
A motivating example of the loomweights datasets basedon the CIDOC-CRM ontology schema as a case study.
A prototype implementation that illustrates ourmethodology.
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
Future work
Refining the grammar and semantics to enhance theexpressiveness of DOTL to improve the usability of thesystem.
Implement a user-friendly graphical modeling environmentfor the language in GMF (Graphical Modeling Framework)to allow easy creation and editing of transformation rules.
Expose the datasets as LOD.
Semantic search and reasoning techniques on the LODsas methodologies to “trace” the links between the artifacts.
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
The tracing network LOD cloud
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets
CAA 2010
Thanks!!!
paper at:http://www.tracingnetworks.ac.uk/publications/CAA2010/paper.pdfslides at:http://www.tracingnetworks.ac.uk/publications/CAA2010/slides.pdf
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets