Presentation given at the 2018 Joint International Semantic Technology conference in Awaji, Japan Associated white paper: Mercier D., Cheong H., Tapaswi C., "Unified Access to Heterogeneous Data Sources Using an Ontology.", 8th Joint International Semantic Technology Conference, JIST 2018, Awaji, Japan, November 26–28, 2018, pp 104-118, Springer

1. 1/23© 2018 Autodesk, Inc.
Unified Access to Heterogeneous Data Sources
using an Ontology
Daniel Mercier, PhD, Team lead
Hyunmin Cheong, PhD, Senior researcher
Chaitanya Tapaswi, Solutions architect
JIST 2018

2. 2/23
Autodesk
Rich portfolio
Design
Construction
Manufacturing
Media and entertainment

3. 3/23
Historical deployment
Encapsulated solutions
…

4. 4/23

5. 5/23
Engaged migration
Online aggregation of data
…

6. 6/23
Segmented database
One solution = Dedicated set of tables
Moldflow
Netfabb
Revit
FeatureCam
…
No-SQL DB Data sources

7. 7/23
Segmented database
One solution = Unique language
Moldflow
Netfabb
Revit
FeatureCam
材料データへのアクセス
…

8. 8/23
Ontology service
To share content
Ontology
service
Moldflow
Netfabb
Revit
FeatureCam
…

9. 9/23
Inspiration
 OBDA – Ontology Based Data Access
 Ontology to support a unified query semantic
 Uses SPARQL as query language
 Converts SPARQL to SQL
Ontology
Ref: Xiao, G., Galvanese, D., Kontchakov, R., Lembo, D., Poggi, A., Rosati, R., Zakharyaschev, M.: “Ontology-based data access: A survey.”,
Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-18, pp.5511-5519 (2018)
SPARQL
SQL
SQL

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Ontology service
Database information
Schemas
DB registry
Ontology
service
…
Moldflow
Netfabb
Revit
FeatureCam

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Ontology service
Database information
Schemas
DB registry
Ontology
service
Moldflow
Netfabb
Revit
FeatureCam
…

12. 12/23
Ontology service
Ontology service
Query
Schema
DB registry
Schema

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Ontology service
Ontology service
Response
Schema
SchemaConvert
Aggregate

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Ontology service
Content
Moldflow Term ↔ Class
Molfdlow
Term
Term
Mappings Enhanced ontology DB registry
Term
Netfabb
Revit
Netfabb Term ↔ Class
Revit Term ↔ Class

15. 15/23
Query style
Either logical_entity = {relationship} term
Or logical_entity = term { [logical_operator] value {unit} }
 Logical operators: ‘<’, ‘>’, ‘<=’, ‘>=’, ‘=’, ‘<>’
 Content between {} is optional
 Combine logical groups with: AND, OR, parenthesis + NOT
 Query creation is supported by autocomplete for relationship / term / value / unit.
Simple, yet powerful

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Query conversion
 Decompose original query into individual logical groups, grouped by AND
 Data source targets, structured sets of Term : Value
 Consequence to missing conversion for a targeted data source:
 Term - Fails conversion (source is ignored),
 Value - Use Value from original query.
 Capabilities to link surrounding domains of knowledge.
 Relationships
 Equivalencies
 Composite name mappings

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Ontology exploration
By property
Thing
Material
Polymer
Thermoplastic
Value
Value
Value
Physical
Property
Structural
Property
“type = Thermoplastic AND YoungModulus = 2280 Mpa”
Young
Modulus
Term
Term
Term
Composes equivalent queries for , ,
Converts unit for
Unit
MPa
Unit
Unit
Unit

18. 18/23
Missing matching
Explore combinations
Thing
Material
Semi
Crystalline
Polymer
Thermoplastic
Polypropylene
Value
Value
Descriptor
Crystalline
State
State
“type = Thermoplastic AND state = SemiCrystalline”
Default Term
Default Term

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Default Term
Ontology expansion [1]
By relationship
Thing
Material Group Atom
Carbon
R-C6(ring-H)
Chemical
Group
Phenyl
Chemical
Functional
Group
R-CH2-CH-
[C6(ring-H)]-R’
PhenylEthyl
Polymer
Thermoplastic
composedOf composedOfcomposedOf
Polystyrene
Value
Value
Value
composescomposescomposes
“composedOf Phenyl”
Default Term
Default Term

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Ontology expansion [2]
By equivalencies
Equivalency: ‘material_structure = 2’
“type = Thermoplastic AND state = SemiCrystalline”Thing
Material
Semi
Crystalline
Polymer
Thermoplastic
Descriptor
Crystalline
State
State
Value
Composes equivalent query for
Descriptor
Type
Term
Resulting pseudo query: “Term = Value AND material_structure = 2”

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Ontology expansion [3]
 Multi-class instances for Terms and Values.
 Composite name increases descriptive depth.
 Limit the ontology to core concepts.
 Complicates alignment between data sources.
 Tool to suggest existing composite names during mapping creation.
Using composite names
young_modulus_value
↕
:YoungModulus + :Value
young_modulus_unit
↕
:YoungModulus + :Unit

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Challenges
 Improve the interface to establish the initial mapping between schema and ontology
 Build a more comprehensive toolset to maintain the ontology by domain experts
 Improve matching suggestions using Natural Language Processing / Word Embedding
 Add support for SQL databases
 Reduce operational time overhead

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Questions

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