xMatcher: Matching extensible markup language schemas using semantic-based techniques

Schema matching is a critical step in data integration systems. Most recent schema matching systems require a manual double-check of the matching results to add missed matches and remove incorrect matches. Manual correction is labor-intensive and time-consuming, however without it the results accuracy is significantly lower. In this paper, we present xMatcher, an approach to automatically match XML schemas. Given two schemas S and S2, xMatcher identifies semantically similar schema elements between S and S2. To obtain correct matches, xMatcher first transforms S and S2 into sets of words; then, it uses a context-based measure to identify the meanings of words in their contexts; next, it captures semantic relatedness between sets of words in different schemas; finally, it uses WordNet information to calculate the similarity values between semantically related sets and matches the pairs of sets whose similarity values are greater than or equal to 0:8. The results show that xMatcher provides superior matching accuracy compared to the state of the art matching systems. Overall, our proposal can be a stepping stone towards decreasing human assistance and overcoming the weaknesses of current matching initiatives in terms of matching accuracy. © 2020, Science and Information Organization.