Research On Mapping XML/Schema To OWL DL Ontology

The semantic Web is the standard of the next-generation World Wide Web. Being the core of the semantic Web, the ontology could be used to represent the ample semantic information among the resource as well as the resource itself in the Web. Consequently, Full implementation of the Semantic Web requires widespread availability of Web ontology owing to the ontology's important role. As an extensible markup language, XML can describe structural data as well as semi-structure data, while the ontology language of the semantic Web is OWL recommended by W3C at present. Consequently, constructing ontology through the Ontology Learning approach, with the XML document existed in the Web broadly as the data source, has become a crucial topic.At present, there are mainly two directions in this area. The first direction is mapping XML document to an existing ontology; the second direction is automatically creating a new ontology by capturing the implicit semantics existing in the structure of XML document. On the basis of the second mapping strategy, this paper describes the overall mapping rules between XML/Schema and OWL ontology by capturing more implicit semantic information of the structure of XML document.This paper summarizes and analyzes the elements between XML/Schema and OWL DL briefly, presents the formal definition of XML/Schema and OWL DL ontology, and makes a compare between the characteristic of XML/Schema and OWL DL ontology in detail, finally, summarizes the similar concept and mechanism, as well as the correspondence relationship between XML/Schema and OWL DL. The ontology consists of ontology model and ontology instance, so this paper divided the process which mapping XML/Schema to OWL DL ontology into two subprocess:the first subprocess is mapping XML Schema which describes the structure of XML document and defines the element type used in the XML document to OWL DL ontology model, i.e. creating the class hierarchy, the object property, the data type property, the property constraint and the property character in the OWL DL ontology; the second subprocess is mapping XML document which conforms to the XML Schema to OWL DL ontology instance, i.e. creating the individuals and the property between the individuals in the OWL DL ontology. As a result, the mapped OWL DL ontology model and OWL DL instance constitute the OWL DL ontology. During each subprocess, this paper presents the formal mapping rules applied to the mapping in abstract level at first, on the basis of that, the specific mapping rules of each component are presented from the standpoint of the abstract data model of XML/Schema. Subsequently, a mapping tool used as the validation of the mapping approach provided by this paper is also available.