The document presents a framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets. It uses ORM reverse engineering to extract data from databases into object structures. It then applies an ECA rule-based transformation using the DOTL language to generate ontology instances from the object structures. A prototype implements the framework to transform a loomweights dataset into RDF/OWL ontology instances.

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A Framework for transforming archaeological
databases to ontological datasets
Monika Solanki
m.solanki@mcs.le.ac.uk
Department of Computer Science
Joint work with
Yi Hong
Department of Computer Science
Lin Foxhall, Alessandro Quercia
School of Archaeology and Ancient History
University of Leicester, UK
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

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From RDBMs to Ontological datasets
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

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Tracing Networks
Archaeologists study a wide range of material objects.
By tracking them at every stage of their production,
distribution, use, and consumption across a large
geographical region, over a long time period, they can
trace the links between the people who made, used, and
taught others to make them.
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

4. CAA 2010
Tracing Networks
Archaeologists study a wide range of material objects.
By tracking them at every stage of their production,
distribution, use, and consumption across a large
geographical region, over a long time period, they can
trace the links between the people who made, used, and
taught others to make them.
Pertinent Questions
How have individuals or groups of individuals learnt how to
organise themselves?
Why did some prosper while others collapsed?
What are the dynamics of power, influence and the
exchange of knowledge?
In what kinds of contexts does innovation appear?
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

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Tracing Networks
www.tracingnetworks.ac.uk
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

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Tracing Networks: The Semantic web perspective
Build the links through their datasets
Monika Solanki
www.tracingnetworks.ac.uk to ontological datasets
A Framework for transforming archaeological databases

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Tracing Networks: Loomweights
Example dataset for this talk: Loomweight dataset
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

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Motivation
Conventional mapping frameworks
provide scripting languages to facilitate the mapping.
apply simplistic mapping rules.
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

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Motivation
Realistic scenarios:
the association between columns and properties is far
more complex than a simple one-to-one correspondence.
domain specific schemas to be used for mapping have
been extended from standard vocabularies or those used
elsewhere.
Loomweights: the ontological instances conform to a
domain specific schema, e.g., CIDOC-CRM.
several ontology schemas are used and the data needs to
be suitably mapped to more than one property.
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

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The Loomweights Dataset
The column diameter in the
RDB table cannot be mapped
as a datatype property.
To specify a relationship
between diameter and the
concept Loomweight, create
intermediate instances of
CIDOC-CRM concepts.
Instances to be contextually
related to each other to
ensure loomweights are
assigned correct diameter
values.
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

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Transformation Framework
ORM Reverse Engineering.
ECA Rule-based Transformation.
Ontology Instance Generation.
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

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ORM Reverse Engineering
Is used to extract the existing tables, columns, relationships
(inc. primary key, foreign key, join etc) and index from a
RDBMS to object-oriented data structures or “classes”.
Records in the table can be instantiated as data objects
which can be easily manipulated and processed using
OOP techniques.
In our proposed approach, the Hibernate ORM Reverse
Engineering tool is used to convert database records into
Java objects.
ORM Reverse Engineering → ECA Rule-based Transformation → Ontology Instance Generation
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

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ECA Rule-based Transformation
An ECA-based (Event-Condition-Action) textual
transformation language DOTL − Database Ontology
Transformation Language.
The fundamental construct of a DOTL transformation rule
is of form:
On Event if Condition Do Action
ORM Reverse Engineering → ECA Rule-based Transformation → Ontology Instance Generation
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

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ECA Rule-based Transformation: DOTL
A basic DOTL rule consists of three parts:
The event part specifies the triggers of the transformation
rule,
The condition part is a logical expression, which checks
the pre-condition of the action to be carried out. The
default conditions is “if undefined”.
The action part usually consists of a series of creation of
new ontology instances, properties and other
corresponding operations.
ORM Reverse Engineering → ECA Rule-based Transformation → Ontology Instance Generation
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

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DOTL rules: Loomweights Database
ORM Reverse Engineering → ECA Rule-based Transformation → Ontology Instance Generation
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

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Ontology Instance Generation
The Transfomer builder component is used to build Java
source code based on the pre-defined DOTL rules.
Finally the Transformer Engine component compiles and
executes the Java code to generate RDF/OWL instances.
The framework exports all data to the RDF store or as
persistent RDF files.
ORM Reverse Engineering → ECA Rule-based Transformation → Ontology Instance Generation
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

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Prototype
Java implementation.
The open source Hibernate Reverse Engineering
framework for object/relational mapping.
DOTL Editor plugin for Eclipse: contains an integrated Java
code generator implemented in Xpand.
Formalised EBNF grammar of DOTL defined in Xtext.
Metamodel of the language is described using the EMF
(Eclipse Modeling Framework).
Protégé-OWL API for the generation of RDF/OWL
instances.
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

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Implementation layers
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

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Closely related work
D2RQ, Virtuoso: a declarative language to describe
mappings between relational database schemata and
OWL/RDFS ontologies.
R2O: XML-based language for the transformation.
STAR
TRANSLATION
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

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Summary
A transformation framework for migrating large volumes of
archaeological data stored in RDBs to ontology based data
sets on the Semantic Web.
The ECA-based scripting language DOTL, which allows
the specification of complex transformation rules from data
objects to ontologies.
A motivating example of the loomweights datasets based
on the CIDOC-CRM ontology schema as a case study.
A prototype implementation that illustrates our
methodology.
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

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Future work
Refining the grammar and semantics to enhance the
expressiveness of DOTL to improve the usability of the
system.
Implement a user-friendly graphical modeling environment
for the language in GMF (Graphical Modeling Framework)
to allow easy creation and editing of transformation rules.
Expose the datasets as LOD.
Semantic search and reasoning techniques on the LODs
as methodologies to “trace” the links between the artifacts.
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

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The tracing network LOD cloud
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets

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Thanks!!!
paper at:
http://www.tracingnetworks.ac.uk/publications/CAA2010/paper.pdf
slides at:
http://www.tracingnetworks.ac.uk/publications/CAA2010/slides.pdf
Monika Solanki A Framework for transforming archaeological databases to ontological datasets