Unified Access to Heterogeneous Data Sources Using an Ontology

Abstract

The rise of cloud computing started a transition for software applications from local to remote infrastructures. This migration created an opportunity to aggregate and consolidate analogous data content. However, this data content usually come with very different data structures and data terminologies and is usually tightly coupled to one or more applications. With these disparities and restrictions, the analogous data ends up both centrally stored but spread over several disconnected heterogeneous data sources. In this article, we present an approach to aggregate data sources using live data consolidation. The approach preserves the original data sources; and by doing so, prevents associated applications from having to migrate to a new data source. The approach uses an ontology at its core to serve as a common semantic ground between data sources and leverage its stored knowledge to expand query capabilities.