Process and Ontology Based Data Integration

Abstract

Over the past years scientific research has been undergoing a special kind of globalization; data stemming from diverse sources spread over the whole world need to be integrated in order to perform analysis with a global context (e.g. to simulate the climate or just to find out how the weather system is working). But also when looking closer at smaller scenarios such as importing and storing data from a sensor network in a database, the need for systematic data integration becomes more and more eminent since the amount and the heterogeneity of data is not declining but increasing constantly. This publication presents a methodology based on process modeling and ontologies for performing data integration. The strength of the methodology resides in the provision of a structured way of how data integration can be performed such that scientists need to be as less as possible concerned with integration issues.