Abstract
The task of combining data residing at different sources to provide the user a unified view is known as data integration. Schema mappings act as glue between the global schema and the source schemas of a data integration system. Global-and-local-as-view (GLAV) is one the approaches for specifying the schema mappings. Tableaux are used for expressing queries and functional dependencies on a single database. We investigate a general technique for expressing a GLAV mapping by a tabular structure called mapping assertion tableaux (MAT). In a similar way, we also express the tuple generating dependency (tgd) and equality generating dependency (egd) constraints by tabular forms, called tabular tgd (TTGD) and tabular egd (TEGD), respectively. A set consisting of the MATs, TTGDs and TEGDs are called schema mapping tableaux (SMT). We present algorithms that use SMT as operator on an instance of the source schema to produce an instance of the target schema. We show that the target instances computed by the SMT are 'minimal' and 'most general' in nature. We also define the notion of equivalence between the schema mappings of two data integration systems and present algorithms that optimize schema mappings through the manipulation of the SMT.