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Matching dependencies: semantics and query answering

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Abstract

Matching dependencies (MDs) are used to declaratively specify the identification (or matching) of certain attribute values in pairs of database tuples when some similarity conditions on other values are satisfied. Their enforcement can be seen as a natural generalization of entity resolution. In what we call the pure case of MD enforcement, an arbitrary value from the underlying data domain can be used for the value in common that is used for a matching. However, the overall number of changes of attribute values is expected to be kept to a minimum. We investigate this case in terms of semantics and the properties of data cleaning through the enforcement of MDs. We characterize the intended clean instances, and also the clean answers to queries, as those that are invariant under the cleaning process. The complexity of computing clean instances and clean query answering is investigated. Tractable and intractable cases depending on the MDs are identified and characterized.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Technology and Engineering, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, K1N 6N5, Canada

    Jaffer Gardezi & Iluju Kiringa

  2. School of Computer Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6, Canada

    Leopoldo Bertossi

Authors
  1. Jaffer Gardezi
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  2. Leopoldo Bertossi
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  3. Iluju Kiringa
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Leopoldo Bertossi.

Additional information

Jaffer Gardezi is a PhD student in computer science at the University of Ottawa. He received a BSc in computer science from the University of Victoria and an MSc in computer science from the University of Waterloo. His research is in duplicate resolution and matching dependencies.

Leopoldo Bertossi is a Full Professor at the School of Computer Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He is Faculty Fellow of the IBM Center for Advanced Studies. He obtained a PhD in Mathematics from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (PUC) in 1988.

Until 2001, he was professor at the Department of Computer Science, PUC; and the President of the Chilean Computer Science Society (SCCC) in 1996 and 1999–2000. He has been visiting professor and researcher at the universities of Toronto, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Marseille-Luminy, Technical University Berlin, Free University of Bolzano-Bozen; and the Technical University of Vienna as a Pauli Fellow.

Prof. Bertossi’s research interests include database theory, data integration, intelligent information systems, data quality, knowledge representation, and logic programming.

Iluju Kiringa received the MS and the PhD degrees in Computer Science from the University of Bonn, Germany, in 1996 and the University of Toronto, Canada, in 2003, respectively. His research interests are in databases, business intelligence, peer-to-peer data management, and knowledge representation. He focuses on run-time data sharing systems, advanced database transactions, active databases, data warehousing and related cleanness issues, conceptual models, and logic-based knowledge representation. Dr. Kiringa is an Associate professor of Computer Science in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the Faculty of Engineering, University of Ottawa which he joined in 2002.

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Gardezi, J., Bertossi, L. & Kiringa, I. Matching dependencies: semantics and query answering. Front. Comput. Sci. 6, 278–292 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-012-2007-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-012-2007-0

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