Call for Proposals/Papers for
SIGMOD Record
Special Issue on
Semantic Interoperability in Global Information Systems
Editors: Aris Ouksel and Amit Sheth
Interoperability amongst interacting heterogeneous information
sources continues to pose enormous challenges to the database, AI and other
communities. Access to relevant and accurate information is becoming increasingly
complex in an environment characterized by large distributed, diverse,
and dynamic information sources. Underscoring this complexity is the evolving
system, semantic and structural heterogeneity of these potentially global,
cross-disciplinary, multicultural and rich-media technologies. While significant
progress has been achieved in system, syntactic, and structural/schematic
interoperability, comprehensive solutions to semantic interoperability
remain elusive. Yet, several trends and advances in software technologies
are continuing to bring focus to semantic issues. These include:
· ease of accessing
and publishing a broad variety of data and data sources, with the corresponding
challenge in heterogeneity and information overload from using simpler
(such as keyword based) access techniques
· progress in techniques
to model, capture, represent and reason about semantics; graduate progress
in attention from data to information, and increasingly knowledge
· challenges in dealing
with non-traditional (esp. visual) data that cannot be easily handled with
well known IR and traditional database techniques
· increasing attention
to the issue of interoperability in various domains and research areas
(e.g., bibliographic data, digital libraries, geographic and environmental
data, space and astronomy data, etc.) and the improved technological ability
to develop more challenging applications (e.g., digital earth, digital
human) involving wider variety of users and perspectives over shared information
resources
· dynamic and flexible
business environment, supported by the evolving concepts of virtual organizations
and adhocracies-- and concomitant requirement for flexible semantic interoperability
to interpret the available information in light of new market contingencies
and the variety of intra- and cross-disciplinary forms of collaboration
scientific or otherwise.
Given a possibly broad interpretation of what is semantics,
we would like to focus on real-world semantics rather than semantics of
formal representations or systems (e.g., semantics associated with a first
order logic or formal axiom system). That is, semantics related to mapping
of objects in the model or computational world onto the real world, or
the issues that involve human interpretation, or meaning and use of data
or information, are of more interest. Items of specific interest include:
· use of domain specific
metadata, domain specific ontologies and context to achieve semantic interoperability
· semantics of visual,
scientific and engineering data
· fundamental issues
in representation and reasoning about real world semantics to achieve semantic
reconciliation, identify relationships or measure semantic proximity
· semantic reconciliation
amongst structured, semi-structured and multimedia information sources;
semantic reconciliation to resolve spatial and temporal conflicts
· theories for supporting
dynamic integration of autonomous and heterogeneous information sources
with possibly evolving and incompatible internal semantics; semantic negotiation
and reconciliation tools in environments characterized by incomplete and
uncertain information
· semantic protocols
to support intelligent and query-directed integration of information where
semantics are viewed as a matter of continuous negotiation and evolution;
coordination and search mechanisms to support semantic reconciliation
· semantic interoperability
challenges in specific domain (such as those mentioned above or the collaborative
domains such as digital earth, etc.)
Schedule:
October 1: 1 to 2 page proposals due to both editors
by email
October 15: invitation to send short submissions (5 to
8 pages)
November 22: submissions by the authors
December 15: comments to the authors of accepted submissions
January 7: final camera ready copy due
March: publication in SIGMOD Record
A likely follow on to the special issue is an edited book
on the topic of the special issue.
Editor contact: