Re: [ontolog-forum] Mapping Tools (was" master data vs. ontologies")

[Doug McDavid <dougmcdavid@xxxxxxxxx>]

This subject has morphed from master data to mapping, and seems to be generally in the realm of ontology support for data management.  I thought it might be helpful to note that a Google search on the two strings ETL and ontology returned about 70,000 hits.  ETL stands for extract, transform and load, which is a very common activity in the database world.  It seems that an ontology-supported ETL process would be close to the topic(s) raised here, and there appears to be a fair amount of experience with this.

On Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 8:50 AM, Burkett, William [USA] <burkett_william@xxxxxxx> wrote:

:-)  Once again, the simpler the question, the greater the volume of responses!  :-)

I wanted to chime on the subject of mapping tools that was raised, as I think this is a critical subject and one that receives far far too little attention (it is literally the "missing link" as far as  interoperability solutions go.)

>> RS
>> Do any mapping tools exist? I have only seen associative or parallel semantic method (manual)
> of looking at Terms and mapping to Entities in OWL- RDF use case and with DB E-R.
>>
>> Many kinds of mapping tools have been developed.  Logic programming
>> languages such as Prolog are an example.  UML diagrams can be and have
>> been mapped to logic, and there are tools for using UML diagrams (and
>> many similar notations) to generate some or all of a computable
>> specification.
>DP
>Mapping tools are hard and IMO there are no good ones, and UML is certainly not one. The problem is probably down to the fact that mapping is hard and there are >often cases where something in one model really can't be represented in another and yet people are forced to try.

These responses confuse me a bit, as I can't grasp how "prolog" is an example of a "mapping tool".    "Mapping", to me, and as I think is intended here, is "data mapping": the specification of how data formatted/structure in accordance with one model can be transformed into data formatted/structured with a different model.  (Or, more weakly, how one model is related to another.)  David's last sentence alludes to the fact that something captured/represented in one model might not exist at all in the second model, making mapping a challenge.

*I*F this is what is intended by "mapping tools", there are several out there:

(1) Liaison's Contivo mapping tool (I've had experience with this - the learning curve is steep, but it's pretty good at what it does)
(2) Altova's MapForce (No experience with this, but it looks like Contivo)
(3) and I believe IBM has a product/tool in this category - sorry - can't remember the name.

Wrt ontologies, a mapping would be specified between the "types" or "classes" in the ontology and transformations would be executed on the "instances" in the ontology.  (And for those thinking about constructs like owl:SameAs for mapping, I'm afraid they are far too weak to be used for data transformation.)

And wrt the original subject of "master data vs. ontologies"), I give my vote to David Price's original explanation of the distinction - I think it was the most practical and accurate.

Bill

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