Metamodel - independent schema & data integration : Towards joining syntax and semantics in generic model management . ?

The paper presents a mathematical framework, in which the main concepts of schema and data integration can be specified both semantically and syntactically in an abstract datamodel independent way. We first define what are schema matching and integration semantically, in terms of sets of instances and mappings between them. We also define schema matching and integration syntactically, and introduce a procedure (the how) for computing the integration of matched schemas according to the syntactical definition in fairly abstract terms. The main theorem of the paper states that the result of syntactical integration satisfies the semantic definition and, hence, does produce what we really need. Viewed in a broader perspective, the framework developed in the paper integrates the syntactical and semantical sides of model management and, particularly, reveals a remarkable duality between them. The results of the paper can then be seen as an (important yet) particular case of this general duality theory. ? Research supported by the Latvian Council of Science (Grant #05.1526), OCE Centre for Communications and Information Technology and IBM CAS Ottawa.