Special Issue on Semantic Web and Data Warehousing @ International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems

CALL FOR PAPERS
International Journal of Semantic Web and Information Systems (IJSWIS) 
http://www.ijswis.org <http://www.ijswis.org/> 
Special Issue on Semantic Web and Data Warehousing
 
The deployment of data warehouses (DWs) to integrate disparate data
sources within a separate database for analysis purposes has become a
standard technique in modern IT landscapes. Nevertheless in practice the
development and application of DWs still pose a number of challenges
which are mainly concerned with the documentation, exchange, and
integration of metadata. On the other hand, the Semantic Web nowadays
offers languages for the automatic reasoning of metadata semantics which
should be of great use in the context of DWs, but have not been explored
in this direction yet. 
 
In the DW context we have to specify analysis requirements of end users,
identify necessary data items and their computation formulas, that have
to be matched with available source data, and documented. In addition
extraction/transformation/load (ETL) processes have to be set up to
integrate source data into the DW.  Ideally, the metadata involved
should be represented in conceptual terms, the semantics should be
described by ontologies, and thus the contents of ontology-driven DWs
should be accessible for automated semantic processing, querying, and
transformation.  However, in practice documentation turns out to be
missing, incomplete, and inconsistent, while a large fraction of
solutions is hard-coded within proprietary formats of commercial tools,
hindering exchange, integration, optimization, re-use, and evolution.
The application of Semantic Web technology in this context can add a
platform-independent conceptual description of DW contents and
multidimensional structures using ontology languages (e.g., Web Ontology
Language (OWL)) that include powerful formal semantics to enable
automated reasoning. 
 
For this special issue on the Semantic Web and Data Warehousing, we
welcome papers reporting original research relevant to topics at the
confluence of data warehousing and the Semantic Web, such as
 
- Ontology-based design of dimension hierarchies, measure schemata, and
ETL processes,
- Ontology-enabled data analysis using semantic query reformulation
techniques, 
- Ontology-driven guided user interfaces providing helpful explanation
components,
- Ontology-based techniques for automated source integration, schema
matching, and schema
   Versioning,
- Industrial use cases and applications.
 
 
Submission Guidelines:
Submitted articles must not have been previously published or currently
submitted for journal publication elsewhere. Submitting authors should
follow the Style and Author Guidelines for regular IJSWIS papers
available at  <http://www.idea-group.com/ijswis>
http://www.idea-group.com/ijswis. Please submit your paper
electronically to either of the co-editors.
 
Important Dates:
Submission Deadline: July 17, 2006
Completion of First-Round Reviews: October 16, 2006
Revised Papers (after Revisions): November 20, 2006
Publication Materials Due: December 11, 2006
Publication: in an Early 2007 issue.
 
Special Issue Guest Editors:
Gottfried Vossen, University of Münster, vossen@uni-muenster.de
Bodo Hüsemann, Informationsfabrik, bhuesemann@informationsfabrik.com
Jens Lechtenbörger, University of Münster,
<mailto:lechten@helios.uni-muenster.de> lechten@helios.uni-muenster.de