Formalization of Direct Mapping for Relational Data to Semantic Web Representation

Abstract

The Web is one of the most popular and richest sources of information. The source of data for a Web page is generally a relational database which has been recognized as a key factor in generating huge amounts of data for semantic web applications. Relational databases and the Semantic Web, in particular RDF (Resource Description Framework) as its main data representation format, are two different approaches for modeling and storing data permanently. To be accessible data from these relational databases, we have to map relational data to RDF. In addition, extracting knowledge, transforming and understanding data from tables are the interesting problems in the areas of databases. The problem of mapping databases to RDF has received formal attention from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). When mapping relational databases into RDF, we can choose mappings which preserve relational constraints and still use the linking capabilities of RDF. Which approach is the most appropriate one depends on the kind of applications for which a resulting RDF graph is assumed to be used. In this approach, in order to transform relational data into Semantic Web representation, we apply formalization rules to complete our mapping process. We also propose a rule to handle blank node which is one of the problems of RDF data model. Our main aim is to be easily accessible relational data content on Semantic web. This is the initial approach for transforming relational data and schema items into Semantic Web representation.