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MIRKO ORSINI

Docente a contratto
Dipartimento di Ingegneria "Enzo Ferrari"

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Pubblicazioni

2023 - A big data platform exploiting auditable tokenization to promote good practices inside local energy communities [Articolo su rivista]
Gagliardelli, Luca; Zecchini, Luca; Ferretti, Luca; Beneventano, Domenico; Simonini, Giovanni; Bergamaschi, Sonia; Orsini, Mirko; Magnotta, Luca; Mescoli, Emma; Livaldi, Andrea; Gessa, Nicola; De Sabbata, Piero; D’Agosta, Gianluca; Paolucci, Fabrizio; Moretti, Fabio
abstract

The Energy Community Platform (ECP) is a modular system conceived to promote a conscious use of energy by the users inside local energy communities. It is composed of two integrated subsystems: the Energy Community Data Platform (ECDP), a middleware platform designed to support the collection and the analysis of big data about the energy consumption inside local energy communities, and the Energy Community Tokenization Platform (ECTP), which focuses on tokenizing processed source data to enable incentives through smart contracts hosted on a decentralized infrastructure possibly governed by multiple authorities. We illustrate the overall design of our system, conceived considering some real-world projects (dealing with different types of local energy community, different amounts and nature of incoming data, and different types of users), analyzing in detail the key aspects of the two subsystems. In particular, the ECDP acquires data of a different nature in a heterogeneous format from multiple sources and supports a data integration workflow and a data lake workflow, designed for different uses of the data. We motivate our technological choices and present the alternatives taken into account, both in terms of software and of architectural design. On the other hand, the ECTP operates a tokenization process via smart contracts to promote good behaviors of users within the local energy community. The peculiarity of this platform is to allow external parties to audit the correct behavior of the whole tokenization process while protecting the confidentiality of the data and the performance of the platform. The main strengths of the presented system are flexibility and scalability (guaranteed by its modular architecture), which allow its applicability to any type of local energy community.

2022 - ECDP: A Big Data Platform for the Smart Monitoring of Local Energy Communities [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Gagliardelli, Luca; Zecchini, Luca; Beneventano, Domenico; Simonini, Giovanni; Bergamaschi, Sonia; Orsini, Mirko; Magnotta, Luca; Mescoli, Emma; Livaldi, Andrea; Gessa, Nicola; De Sabbata, Piero; D’Agosta, Gianluca; Paolucci, Fabrizio; Moretti3, Fabio
abstract

2019 - Fitness tracking wearable devices and a dedicated smart phone app (MySAwH App) to predict quality of life in PLWH: a multi-centre prospective study [Abstract in Atti di Convegno]
Guaraldi, G; Orsini, M; Caselgrandi, A; Malagoli, A; D'Imprima, F; Milic, J; Ghinelli, F; Martoglia, R; Mandreoli, F; Ferrari, D; Liu, G; Bloch, M
abstract

2018 - MOMIS Dashboard: a powerful data analytics tool for Industry 4.0 [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Magnotta, Luca; Gagliardelli, Luca; Simonini, Giovanni; Orsini, Mirko; Bergamaschi, Sonia
abstract

In this work we present the MOMIS Dashboard, an interactive data analytics tool to explore and visualize data sources content through several kind of dynamic views (e.g. maps, bar, line, pie, etc.). The software tool is very versatile, and supports the connection to the main relational DBMS and Big Data sources. Moreover, it can be connected to MOMIS, a powerful Open Source Data Integration system, able to integrate heterogeneous data sources as enterprise information systems as well as sensors data. MOMIS Dashboard provides a secure permission management to limit data access on the basis of a user role, and a Designer to create and share personalized insights on the company KPIs, facilitating the enterprise collaboration. We illustrate the MOMIS Dashboard efficacy in a real enterprise scenario: a production monitoring platform to analyze real-time and historical data collected through sensors located on production machines that optimize production, energy consumption, and enable preventive maintenance.

2017 - My smart age with HIV: An innovative mobile and IoMT framework for patient's empowerment [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Orsini, Mirko; Pacchioni, Marco; Malagoli, Andrea; Guaraldi, Giovanni
abstract

In the My Smart Age with HIV (MySAwH) project1, an innovative mobile and IoMT framework has been developed to empower patients via health promotion, assessing reduction in health deficit and improvement in quality of life. The MySAwH IoMT framework has been designed to expand the traditional healthcare infrastructure providing patient monitoring and support outside the hospitals. It allows the collection of patient's data from smartphone and wearable devices, the integration and analysis of the collected data, and provide real-time insights of patient's health status. Health coaches can monitor the patient's care path and establish a direct communication channel through an integrated secure chat system. This paper describes the MySAwH IoMT framework features and demonstrate how the IoMT, mobile and wearable technologies have been successfully exploited to provide: i) physicians with a continuous patient monitoring to measure the response to illness and the life quality improvement; ii) patients with an up to date insight of health conditions and a constant support via a direct communication with the health coaches.

2017 - The Italian FSHD registry: An enhanced data integration and analytics framework for smart health care [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Orsini, Mirko; Calanchi, Enrico; Magnotta, Luca; Gagliardelli, Luca; Govi, Monica; Mele, Fabiano; Tupler, Rossella
abstract

Facioscapulohumeral dystrophy (FSHD) is a rare genetic disease that has been described more than a hundred years ago. The Miogen Lab has been able to collect a large amount of data on patients affected by FSHD and their relatives over the years, also extending the research to their ancestors. Collected data include molecular analysis, clinical information on health status, family pedigree and geographic origin. The challenge of FSHD Registry is to investigate these large amount of information, discover additional elements related to disease onset and better understand the clinical progression and genetic inheritance of the disease, exploiting data integration capabilities and Big Data techniques. In this paper we describe the tools we used to collect, integrate and display these data in a framework that allows users to search among clinical records to elaborate brief reports and discover new relations on collected data. The solution provides charts, maps and search tools customized on the specific needs that came to light during the collaboration between DataRiver and Miogen Lab, joining the clinical knowledge of the latter with the information technology expertise of the former. The framework offers a single entry point for all genomic and therapeutic studies.

2015 - Integrazione di dati clinici con il sistema MOMIS [Capitolo/Saggio]
Benedetti, Fabio; Bergamaschi, Sonia; Orsini, Mirko; Magnotta, Luca
abstract

Nel corso dell’ultimo decennio è diventata sempre più rilevante la necessità di accedere ad informazioni distribuite e contestualmente anche il problema dell’integrazione di informazioni provenienti da sorgenti eterogenee. In campo medico, gli istituti di ricerca e le aziende ospedaliere hanno a disposizione un nu-mero sempre crescente di fonti d’informazione, che possono contenere dati cor-relati tra loro ma spesso ridondanti, eterogenei e non sempre consistenti. L’esigenza, soprattutto da parte delle organizzazioni di ricerca, è quella di poter accedere in modo semplice a tutte le informazioni distribuite sui diversi sistemi informativi, e poter costruire applicazioni che utilizzino in tempo reale tali infor-mazioni, per poter ottenere nel minor tempo possibile i risultati che saranno a be-neficio dei pazienti. In questo articolo viene presentato il progetto di integrazione dati degli studi clini-ci sperimentali condotti dalla FIL (Fondazione Italiana Linfomi) effettuato dal gruppo di ricerca DBGroup e dalla spin off universitaria DataRiver. Il progetto ha riguardato l’integrazione dei dati provenienti da 3 diversi sistemi informativi al fine di ottenere una visione unificata dell’andamento di tutti gli studi ed effettua-re analisi statistiche dinamiche in tempo reale. Lo strumento per il monitoraggio dei trial clinici “Trial Monitoring tool”, sviluppato sfruttando il sistema di data integration MOMIS ed il componente MOMIS Dashboard, consente di effettuare ricerche e monitoraggio dei dati aggregati e di visualizzare i risultati dell’andamento degli studi su mappe, grafici e tabelle dinamiche.

2015 - MOMIS Goes Multimedia: WINDSURF and the Case of Top-K Queries [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Bartolini, Iaria; Beneventano, Domenico; Bergamaschi, Sonia; Ciaccia, Paolo; Corni, Alberto; Orsini, Mirko; Patella, Marco; Santese, MARCO MARIA
abstract

In a scenario with “traditional” and “multimedia” data sources, this position paper discusses the following question: “How can a multimedia local source (e.g., Windsurf) supporting ranking queries be integrated into a mediator system without such capabilities (e.g., MOMIS)?” More precisely, “How to support ranking queries coming from a multimedia local source within a mediator system with a “traditional” query processor based on an SQL-engine?” We first describe a na¨ıve approach for the execution of range and Top-K global queries where the MOMIS query processing method remains substantially unchanged, but, in the case of Top-K queries, it does not guarantee to obtain K results. We then discuss two alternative modalities for allowing MOMIS to return the Top-K best results of a global query.

2011 - A Semantic Approach to ETL Technologies [Articolo su rivista]
Bergamaschi, Sonia; Guerra, Francesco; Orsini, Mirko; Claudio, Sartori; Vincini, Maurizio
abstract

Data warehouse architectures rely on extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) processes for the creation of anupdated, consistent and materialized view of a set of data sources. In this paper, we aim to support these processes byproposing a tool for the semi-automatic definition of inter-attribute semantic mappings and transformation functions.The tool is based on semantic analysis of the schemas for the mapping definitions amongst the data sources and thedata warehouse, and on a set of clustering techniques for defining transformation functions homogenizing data comingfrom multiple sources. Our proposal couples and extends the functionalities of two previously developed systems: theMOMIS integration system and the RELEVANT data analysis system.

2011 - Data Integration [Capitolo/Saggio]
Bergamaschi, Sonia; Beneventano, Domenico; Guerra, Francesco; Orsini, Mirko
abstract

Given the many data integration approaches, a complete and exhaustivecomparison of all the research activities is not possible. In this chapter, we willpresent an overview of the most relevant research activities andideas in the field investigated in the last 20 years. We will also introduce the MOMISsystem, a framework to perform information extraction and integration from bothstructured and semistructured data sources, that is one of the most interesting resultsof our research activity. An open source version of the MOMIS system was deliveredby the academic startup DataRiver (www.datariver.it).

2011 - The Open Source release of the MOMIS Data Integration System [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Bergamaschi, Sonia; Beneventano, Domenico; Corni, Alberto; Entela, Kazazi; Orsini, Mirko; Po, Laura; Sorrentino, Serena
abstract

MOMIS (Mediator EnvirOnment for Multiple InformationSources) is an Open Source Data Integration system able to aggregate data coming from heterogeneous data sources (structured and semistructured) in a semi-automatic way. DataRiver3 is a Spin-Off of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia that has re-engineered the MOMIS system, and released its Open Source version both for commercial and academic use. The MOMIS system has been extended with a set of features to minimize the integration process costs, exploiting the semantics of the data sources and optimizing each integration phase.The Open Source MOMIS system have been successfully applied in several industrial sectors: Medical, Agro-food, Tourism, Textile, Mechanical, Logistics. This paper describes the features of the Open Source MOMIS system and how it is able to address real data integration challenges.

2010 - Keymantic: Semantic Keyword-based Searching in Data Integration Systems [Articolo su rivista]
Bergamaschi, Sonia; Domnori, Elton; Guerra, Francesco; Orsini, Mirko; R., Trillo Lado; Y., Velegrakis
abstract

We propose the demonstration of Keymantic, a system for keyword-based searching in relational databases that does not require a-priori knowledge of instances held in a database. It nds numerous applications in situations where traditional keyword-based searching techniques are inapplicable due to the unavailability of the database contents for the construction of the required indexes.

2010 - Keymantic: Semantic Keyword-based Searching in Data Integration Systems [Software]
Bergamaschi, Sonia; Domnori, Elton; Guerra, Francesco; Orsini, Mirko; Raquel Trillo, Lado; Yannis, Velegrakis
abstract

Keymantic is a systemfor keyword-based searching in relational databases thatdoes not require a-priori knowledge of instances held in adatabase. It finds numerous applications in situations wheretraditional keyword-based searching techniques are inappli-cable due to the unavailability of the database contents forthe construction of the required indexes.

2010 - MOMIS: Getting through the THALIA benchmark [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Beneventano, Domenico; Bergamaschi, Sonia; Orsini, Mirko; Vincini, Maurizio
abstract

During the last decade many data integration systems characterized by a classical wrapper/mediator architecture based on a Global Virtual Schema (Global Virtual View - GVV) have been proposed. The data sources store data, while the GVV provides a reconciled, integrated, and virtual view of the underlying sources. Each proposed system contribute to the state of the art advancement by focusing on different aspects to provide an answer to one or more challenges of the data integration problem, ranging from system-level heterogeneities, to structural syntax level heterogeneities at the semantic level. The approaches are still in part manual, requiring a great amount of customization for data reconciliation and for writing specific non reusable programming code. The specialization of mediator systems make a comparisons among the various systems difficult. Therefore, the last Lowell Report [1] has provided the guideline for the definition of a public benchmark for data integration problems. The proposal is called THALIA (Test Harness for the Assessment of Legacy information Integration Approaches) [2], and it provides researchers with a collection of downloadable data sources representing University course catalogues, a set of twelve benchmark queries, as well as a scoring function for ranking the performance of an integration system. In this paper we show how the MOMIS mediator system we developed [3,4] can deal with all the twelve queries of the THALIA benchmark by simply extending and combining the declarative translation functions available in MOMIS and without any overhead of new code. This is a remarkable result, in fact, as far as we know, no system has provided a complete answer to the benchmark.

2009 - An ETL tool based on semantic analysis of schemata and instances [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Bergamaschi, Sonia; Guerra, Francesco; Orsini, Mirko; C., Sartori; Vincini, Maurizio
abstract

In this paper we propose a system supporting the semi-automatic definition of inter-attribute mappings and transformation functions used as an ETL tool in a data warehouse project. The tool supports both schema level analysis, exploited for the mapping definitions amongst the data sources and the data warehouse,and instance level operations, exploited for defining transformation functions that integrate data coming from multiple sources in a common representation.Our proposal couples and extends the functionalities of two previously developed systems: the MOMIS integration system and the RELEVANT data analysis system.

2009 - An Ontology-Based Data Integration System for Data and Multimedia Sources [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Beneventano, Domenico; Orsini, Mirko; Po, Laura; Sala, Antonio; Sorrentino, Serena
abstract

Data integration is the problem of combining data residing at distributed heterogeneous sources, including multimedia sources, and providing the user with a unified view of these data. Ontology based Data Integration involves the use of ontology(s) to effectively combine data and information from multiple heterogeneous sources [16]. Ontologies, with respect to the integration of data sources, can be used for the identification and association of semantically correspond- ing information concepts, i.e. for the definition of semantic mappings among concepts of the information sources. MOMIS is a Data Integration System which performs in-formation extraction and integration from both structured and semi- structured data sources [6]. In [5] MOMIS was extended to manage “traditional” and “multimedia” data sources at the same time. STASIS is a comprehensive application suite which allows enterprises to simplify the mapping process between data schemas based on semantics [1]. Moreover, in STASIS, a general framework to perform Ontology-driven Semantic Mapping has been pro-posed [7]. This paper describes the early effort to combine the MOMIS and the STASIS frameworks in order to obtain an effective approach for Ontology-Based Data Integration for data and multimedia sources.

2009 - DataRiver [Spin Off]
Bergamaschi, Sonia; Orsini, Mirko; Beneventano, Domenico; Sala, Antonio; Corni, Alberto; Po, Laura; Sorrentino, Serena; Quix, Srl
abstract

2009 - I tumori nelle provincie di Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena [Monografia/Trattato scientifico]
De Lisi, V.; Bozzani, F.; Michiara, M.; Sgargi, P.; Mangone, L.; Caroli, S.; Di Felice, E.; Pellegri, C.; Pezzarossi, A.; Storchi, C.; Vicentini, M.; Federico, Massimo; Artioli, M. E.; Braghiroli, B.; Cirilli, C.; Luminari, Stefano; Marcheselli, Luigi; Orsini, Mirko; Pirani, Monica; Valla, K.
abstract

Volume contenente i dati di incidenza, mortalità e sopravvivenza dei tumori nelle provincie di Parma, Reggio Emilia e Modena nell'anno 2007.

2009 - Improving Extraction and Transformation in ETL by Semantic Analysis [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Guerra, Francesco; Bergamaschi, Sonia; Orsini, Mirko; Claudio, Sartori; Vincini, Maurizio
abstract

Extraction, Transformation and Loading processes (ETL) are crucial for the data warehouseconsistency and are typically based on constraints and requirements expressed in natural language in the form ofcomments and documentations. This task is poorly supported by automatic software applications, thus makingthese activities a huge works for data warehouse. In a traditional business scenario, this fact does not representa real big issue, since the sources populating a data warehouse are fixed and directly known by the dataadministrator. Nowadays, the actual business needs require enterprise information systems to have a greatflexibility concerning the allowed business analysis and the treated data. Temporary alliances of enterprises,market analysis processes, the data availability on Internet push enterprises to quickly integrate unexpected datasources for their activities. Therefore, the reference scenario for data warehouse systems extremely changes,since data sources populating the data warehouse may not directly be known and managed by the designers,thus creating new requirements for ETL tools related to the improvement of the automation of the extraction andtransformation process, the need of managing heterogeneous attribute values and the ability to manage differentkinds of data sources, ranging from DBMS, to flat file, XML documents and spreadsheets. In this paper wepropose a semantic-driven tool that couples and extends the functionalities of two systems: the MOMISintegration system and the RELEVANT data analysis system. The tool aims at supporting the semi-automaticdefinition of ETL inter-attribute mappings and transformations in a data warehouse project. By means of asemantic analysis, two tasks are performed: 1) identification of the parts of the schemata of the data sourceswhich are related to the data warehouse; 2) supporting the definition of transformation rules for populating thedata warehouse. We experimented the approach in a real scenario: preliminary qualitative results show that ourtool may really support the data warehouse administrator’s work, by considerably reducing the data warehousedesign time.

2009 - Keymantic: A keyword Based Search Engine using Structural Knwoledge [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Guerra, Francesco; Bergamaschi, Sonia; Orsini, Mirko; Sala, Antonio; Sartori, C.
abstract

Traditional techniques for query formulation need the knowledge of the database contents, i.e. which data are stored in the data source and how they are represented.In this paper, we discuss the development of a keyword-based search engine for structured data sources. The idea is to couple the ease of use and flexibility of keyword-based search with metadata extracted from data schemata and extensional knowledge which constitute a semantic network of knowledge. Translating keywords into SQL statements, we will develop a search engine that is effective, semantic-based, and applicablealso when instance are not continuously available, such as in integrated data sources or in data sources extracted from the deep web.

2009 - Semantic Analysis for an Advanced ETL framework [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Bergamaschi, Sonia; Guerra, Francesco; Orsini, Mirko; C., Sartori; Vincini, Maurizio
abstract

In this paper we propose a system supporting the semi-automatic definition of inter-attribute mappings and transformation functions used as ETL tool in a data warehouse project. The tool supports both schema level analysis, exploited for the mapping definitions amongst the data sources and the data warehouse, and instance level operations, exploited for defining transformationfunctions that integrate in a common representation data coming from multiple sources.Our proposal couples and extends the functionalities of two previously developed systems: the MOMIS integration system and the RELEVANT data analysis system.

2009 - The MOMIS-STASIS approach for Ontology-Based Data Integration [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Beneventano, Domenico; Orsini, Mirko; Po, Laura; Sorrentino, Serena
abstract

Ontology based Data Integration involves the use of ontology(s) to effectively combine data and information from multiple heterogeneous sources. Ontologies can be used in an integration task to describe the semantics of the information sources and to make the contents explicit. With respect to the integration of data sources, they can be used for the identification and association of semantically corresponding information concepts, i.e. for the definition of semantic mapping among concepts of the information sources. MOMIS is a Data Integration System which performs information extraction and integration from both structured and semi-structured data sources. The goal of the STASIS project is to create a comprehensive application suite which allows enterprises to simplify the mapping process between data schemas based on semantics.Moreover, in STASIS, a general framework to perform Ontology-driven Semantic Mapping has been proposed. This paper describes the early effort to combine the MOMIS and the STASIS frameworks in order to obtain an effective approach for Ontology-Based Data Integration.

2007 - A new type of metadata for querying data integration systems [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Bergamaschi, Sonia; Guerra, Francesco; Orsini, Mirko; C., Sartori
abstract

Research on data integration has provided languages and systems able to guarantee an integrated intensional representation of a given set of data sources.A significant limitation common to most proposals is that only intensional knowledge is considered, with little or no consideration for extensional knowledge. In this paper we propose a technique to enrich the intension of an attribute with a new sort of metadata: the “relevant values”, extracted from the attribute values.Relevant values enrich schemata with domain knowledge; moreover they can be exploited by a user in the interactive process of creating/refining a query. The technique, fully implemented in a prototype, is automatic, independent of the attribute domain and it is based on data mining clustering techniques and emerging semantics from data values. It is parametrized with various metrics for similarity measures and is a viable tool for dealing with frequently changing sources.

2007 - Extracting Relevant Attribute Values for Improved Search [Articolo su rivista]
Bergamaschi, Sonia; Guerra, Francesco; Orsini, Mirko; C., Sartori
abstract

A new kind of metadata offers a synthesized view of an attribute's values for a user to exploit when creating or refining a search query in data-integration systems. The extraction technique that obtains these values is automatic and independent of an attribute domain but parameterized with various metrics for similarity measures. The authors describe a fully implemented prototype and some experimental results to show the effectiveness of "relevant values" when searching a knowledge base.

2007 - Query Translation on heterogeneous sources in MOMIS Data Transformation Systems [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Beneventano, Domenico; Vincini, Maurizio; Orsini, Mirko; Bergamaschi, Sonia; Nana, C.
abstract

Abstract

2007 - Relevant News: a semantic news feed aggregator [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Bergamaschi, Sonia; Guerra, Francesco; Orsini, Mirko; Sartori, C; Vincini, Maurizio
abstract

In this paper we present RELEVANTNews, a web feed reader that automatically groups news related to the same topic published in different newspapers in different days. The tool is based on RELEVANT, a previously developed tool, which computes the “relevant values”, i.e. a subset of the values of a string attribute.Clustering the titles of the news feeds selected by the user, it is possible identify sets of related news on the basis of syntactic and lexical similarity.RELEVANTNews may be used in its default configuration or in a personalized way: the user may tune some parameters in order to improve the grouping results. We tested the tool with more than 700 news published in 30 newspapers in four daysand some preliminary results are discussed.

2007 - RELEvant VAlues geNeraTor [Software]
Bergamaschi, Sonia; Claudio, Sartori; Guerra, Francesco; Orsini, Mirko
abstract

A new kind of metadata offers a synthesized view of an attribute's values for a user to exploit when creating or refining a search query in data-integration systems. The extraction technique that obtains these values is automatic and independent of an attribute domain but parameterized with various metrics for similarity measures.

2007 - Relevant values: new metadata to provide insight on attribute values at schema level [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Bergamaschi, Sonia; Guerra, Francesco; Orsini, Mirko; C., Sartori
abstract

Research on data integration has provided languages and systems able to guarantee an integrated intensionalrepresentation of a given set of data sources. A significant limitation common to most proposals is that only intensional knowledge is considered, with little or no consideration for extensional knowledge.In this paper we propose a technique to enrich the intension of an attribute with a new sort of metadata: the “relevant values”, extracted from the attribute values. Relevant values enrich schemata with domain knowledge; moreover they can be exploited by a user in the interactive process of creating/refining a query. The technique, fully implemented in a prototype, is automatic, independent of the attribute domain and it is basedon data mining clustering techniques and emerging semantics from data values. It is parametrized with various metrics for similarity measures and is a viable tool for dealing with frequently changing sources, as in the Semantic Web context.

2006 - Instances Navigation for Querying Integrated Data from Web-Sites [Capitolo/Saggio]
Beneventano, Domenico; Bergamaschi, Sonia; Bruschi, Stefania; Guerra, Francesco; Orsini, Mirko; Vincini, Maurizio
abstract

Research on data integration has provided a set of rich and well understood schema mediation languages and systems that provide a meta-data representation of the modeled real world, while, in general, they do not deal with data instances.Such meta-data are necessary for querying classes result of an integration process: the end user typically does not know the contents of such classes, he simply defines his queries on the basis of the names of classes and attributes.In this paper we introduce an approach enriching the description of selected attributes specifying as meta-data a list of the “relevant values” for such attributes. Furthermore relevant values may be hierarchically collected in a taxonomy. In this way, the user may exploit new meta-data in the interactive process of creating/refining a query. The same meta-data are also exploited by the system in the query rewriting/unfolding process in orderto filter the results showed to the user.We conducted an evaluation of the strategy in an e-business context within the EU-IST SEWASIE project. The evaluation proved the practicability of the approach for large value instances.

2006 - Instances navigation for querying integrated data from web-sites [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Beneventano, Domenico; Bergamaschi, Sonia; Bruschi, Stefania; Guerra, Francesco; Orsini, Mirko; Vincini, Maurizio
abstract

Research on data integration has provided a set of rich and well understood schema mediation languages and systems that provide a meta-data representation of the modeled real world, while, in general, they do not deal with data instances.Such meta-data are necessary for querying classes result of an integration process: the end user typically does not know the contents of such classes, he simply defines his queries on the basis of the names of classes and attributes.In this paper we introduce an approach enriching the description of selected attributes specifying as meta-data a list of the “relevant values” for such attributes. Furthermore relevant values may be hierarchically collected in a taxonomy. In this way, the user may exploit new meta-data in the interactive process of creating/refining a query. The same meta-data are also exploited by the system in the query rewriting/unfolding process in orderto filter the results showed to the user.We conducted an evaluation of the strategy in an e-business context within the EU-IST SEWASIE project. The evaluation proved the practicability of the approach for large value instances.

2004 - MOMIS: an Ontology-based Information Integration System(software) [Software]
Bergamaschi, Sonia; Beneventano, Domenico; Guerra, Francesco; Orsini, Mirko; Vincini, Maurizio
abstract

The Mediator Environment for Multiple Information Sources (Momis), developed by the database research group at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, aims to construct synthesized, integrated descriptions of information coming from multiple heterogeneous sources. Our goal is to provide users with a global virtual view (GVV) of information sources, independent oftheir location or their data’s heterogeneity.An open source version of the MOMIS system was released on April 2010 by the spin-off DATARIVER (www.datariver.it)Such a view conceptualizes the underlying domain; you can think of it as an ontology describing the sources involved. The Semantic Web exploits semantic markups to provide Web ages with machine-readable definitions. It thus relieson the a priori existence of ontologies that represent the domains associated with the given information sources. This approachrelies on the selected reference ontology’s accuracy, but we find that most ontologies in common use are generic and that theannotation phase (in which semantic annotations connect Web page parts to ontology items) causes a loss of semantics. Byinvolving the sources themselves, our approach builds an ontology that more precisely represents the domain. Moreover,the GVV is annotated according to a lexical ontology, which provides an easily understandable meaning to content.