Schema Mappings and Data Exchange

Lecturer: Phokion Kolaitis

Schema mappings are high-level specifications, typically expressed in a suitable logical formalism, that describe the relationship between two database schemas. Schema mappings constitute the essential building blocks in formalizing such critical data-interoperability tasks as data exchange and data integration. For this reason, they have been the focus of extensive research investigations over the past decade.

The purpose of this course is to present a self-contained introduction to schema mappings and to illustrate some of their uses and applications with particular emphasis on data exchange. After a review of relational databases, conjunctive queries, and homomorphisms, the following topics will be covered: schema-mapping languages, semantics and computational complexity of data exchange, query-answering in data exchange, composing schema mappings, and deriving schema mappings from data examples.

Course slides: Lec 1 (revised)  Lec 2  Lec 3  Lec 4  Lec 5