Special Issue on Semantic Web and Data Warehousing @ IJ on Semantic Web and Information Systems

 CALL FOR PAPERS
International Journal of Semantic Web and Information Systems (IJSWIS)
http://www.idea-group.com/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: October 16, 2006
Completion of First-Round Reviews: January 16, 2007
Revised Papers (after Revisions): February 20, 2007
Publication Materials Due: March 11, 2007
Publication: in a Fall 2007 issue.
 
Special Issue Guest Editors:
Gottfried Vossen, University of Münster, Germany, vossen@uni-muenster.de, and University of Waikato, New Zealand, vossen@waikato.ac.nz 
Bodo Hüsemann, Informationsfabrik,  <mailto:bhuesemann@informationsfabrik.com> bhuesemann@informationsfabrik.com
Jens Lechtenbörger, University of Münster, lechten@helios.uni-muenster.de
 
[Note: For deadline extension please contact one of the Guest Editors]