SOURCE RECORD · openalex
Ontology-Driven Data Access and Data Integration with an Application in the Materials Design Domain
The Semantic Web aims to make data on the web machine-readable by introducing semantics to the data. Ontologies are one of the critical technologies in the Semantic Web. Ontologies, which provide a formal definition of a domain of interest, can play an important role in enabling semantics-aware data access and data integration over heterogeneous data sources. Traditionally, ontology-based data access and integration methods focus on data that follows relational data models. However, in some domains, such as materials design, the models that data follows and the methods by which it is shared differ today. Data may be based on different data models (i.e., relational models and non-relational models) and may be shared in different ways (e.g., as tabular data via SQL queries or API (Application Programming Interface) requests, or as JSON-formatted data via API requests). To address these challenges, conventional ontology-based data access and integration approaches must be adapted. The recently developed GraphQL, a framework for building APIs, is an interesting candidate for providing such an approach, although the use of GraphQL for integration has not yet been studied.