RDF-Based Architecture for Semantic Integration of Heterogeneous Information Sources

The proposed integration architecture aims at exploiting data semantics in order to provide a coherent and meaningful (with respect to a given conceptual model) view of the integrated heterogeneous information sources. The architecture is split into five separate layers to assure modularization, providing description, requirements, and interfaces for each. It favors the lazy retrieval paradigm over the data warehousing approach. The novelty of the architecture lies in the combination of semantic and on-demand driven retrieval. This line of attack offers several advantages but brings also challenges, both of which we discuss with respect to RDF, the architecture’s underlying model.