Semantic Web-Based Information Systems: State-of-the-Art ...

Kaykova, Khr yenko, Kovtun, Naumenko, Terz yan, & Zharko
Figure 9. XML transformation in MapForce, adopted
(to other existing standards). We assume such approach to decrease the complexity
of a whole transformation task, because existing tools and standards of syntactical
transformation can be reused and utilized. Canonical form limits variety of syntactical
representation of the same domain to a strict syntactical form and allows a
template-based approach for semantic transformation.
From the existing commercial tools that provide transformation of XML to other
formats, Altova MapForce can be mentioned. 19 This commercial tool allows XML
to XML transformation based upon two XML schemas (Figure 9, left picture). It
also might be necessary to perform some processing functions to pipe data from
source to target.
MapForce allows mapping between XML and Relational database, too (Figure 9,
right picture). The process of mapping starts from the loading of database schema
and XML schema. Then, an engineer manually fulfills matching between XML
elements and database entities. While mapping, it might be necessary to use processing
functions.
Canonical Forms
The development of the canonical forms for a particular problem domain involves
domain experts and takes into account existing formalizations of the same problem
domain. As an example of the latter, Paper IXI, 20 a consortia-wide XML-based
standard for Paper Mill model, can be mentioned.
Copyright © 2007, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of
Idea Group Inc. is prohibited.