On the Ontology Instance Matching Problem

Most of the existing work on ontology matching is focused at the schema level, while, at the time being, instance-level matching techniques are only marginally considered. In this paper, we address the problem of ontology instance matching by providing a reference definition and by discussing key requirements and possible application fields. The architectural design of the HMatch 2.0 ontology matching suite is also presented as a concrete example of an ontology instance matcher.

I. Introduction

In the literature, the instance matching problem has been widely investigated in several application domains where it is known with different names according to the specific requirements that need to be satisfied and to the goals that need to be pursued. Up to now, the instance matching problem has been recognized as particularly relevant in database and data integration applications where it is referred to as record linkage and it is defined as the task of quickly and accurately identifying records corresponding to the same entity from one or more data sources [1]. More generally, instance matching is frequently referred to as an Entity Resolution problem (also called Deduplication [2]) and it is defined as the process of identifying and merging records judged to represent the same real-world entity [3].