Tasks that Require, or can Benefit from, Matching Blank Nodes
This work tackles a fundamental issue in data integration and interoperability for Semantic Web and Linked Data practitioners, though it is largely incremental as it builds on existing concepts without introducing new methods.
The paper addresses the persistent problem of constructing mappings between unnamed information elements (blank nodes) in information systems, particularly in Semantic Web and Linked Data contexts, by formally defining bnode matching problems for various scenarios and discussing existing implementations and open challenges.
In various domains and cases, we observe the creation and usage of information elements which are unnamed. Such elements do not have a name, or may have a name that is not externally referable (usually meaningless and not persistent over time). This paper discusses why we will never `escape' from the problem of having to construct mappings between such unnamed elements in information systems. Since unnamed elements nowadays occur very often in the framework of the Semantic Web and Linked Data as blank nodes, the paper describes scenarios that can benefit from methods that compute mappings between the unnamed elements. For each scenario, the corresponding bnode matching problem is formally defined. Based on this analysis, we try to reach to more a general formulation of the problem, which can be useful for guiding the required technological advances. To this end, the paper finally discusses methods to realize blank node matching, the implementations that exist, and identifies open issues and challenges.