The DIST workshop focuses on the use of semantic technologies for heterogeneous data integration. The workshop will particularly focus on ontology mediation techniques and ontology based data integration. As the Web of data is now becoming a reality with the publication of large amount of structured knowledge as linked data, techniques are needed to properly integrate these data together in a consistent and efficient manner. We will study in this workshop the latest advances on the set of techniques relevant to integrate ontologies together, link existing datasets to ontologies, and properly merge and fusion these datasets. The workshop will be organized around presentations of original works, followed by discussions where emergent topics will be drawn.

DIST 2008 Programme

8th of December, Rama Gardens Hotel, Bangkok

8h30	Opening
8h40	Invited Speaker, Chris Bizer. Fusing the Web of Data
9h20	Invited Speaker, Jerome euzenat. Ten challenges for ontology matching
10h00	Break
10h30	Yanbin Liu and Francois Scharffe and Chunguang Zhou. Towards Practical RDF Datasets Fusion
10h50	Farah Layouni and Yann Pollet. Ontology for mobile agent cooperation in federated identity platform
11h10	Domenico Beneventano, Sonia Bergamaschi, Claudio Gennaro, Francesco Guerra, Matteo Mordacchini and Antonio Sala. A Mediator System for Data and Multimedia Sources
11h30	Stefan Dietze and John Domingue. Integrating Ontologies through Conceptual Spaces
11h50	Closing
12h00	Lunch

Workshop description

Topic relevance

While the semantic Web has been a vision for more than ten years, it is now becoming a reality with the publication of considerable amounts of interlinked data. This effort, mainly driven by the Linking Open Data project enables the development of a multitude of new applications. It also brings semantic technology researchers to experiment the techniques they have studied in the recent years on real cases. It finally brings new issue to the research front. Data integration using ontology supposes to:

Being able to relate datasources to ontologies
Being able to interchange data between heterogeneous ontologies
Being able to fusion data properly

The successful realization of these three points will enable a web of data as foreseen in visionary papers from the beginning of the millennium. We will in this workshop study these topics and discuss possible other issues needed to be overcome.

Topics of interest

Ontology matching
Database to ontology mapping (mapping languages, algorithms and tools)
Data fusion
Mediators (instance transformation, query rewriting, ontology merging)
Mediation frameworks (interoperability between graphical interfaces, matching systems and mediators)
Ontology alignment representation and tools (languages, graphical tools, correspondence patterns)
Applications of ontology mediation techniques: biomedical domain, multimedia ontologies, industrial applications.

Intended Audience

This workshop is relevant for academics and industrial interested in state of the art data integration. Academics will be interested to either contribute with achievement or discuss emerging topics on semantic data integration. Industrials will bring their experience and problems in practical usage of data mediation.

Workshop format

The workshop will be lasting a full day. First half day scientific presentations will be held. A keynote speech at the beginning will present new trends in data integration and semantic technologies, followed by short presentations exposing the participants topics of interest. The second half of the day will be a discussion based on the workshop topics and the interests raised in the morning session. Post workshop proceedings will be published online.