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| - Semantic matching is a technique used in computer science to identify information which is semantically related. Given any two graph-like structures, e.g. classifications, database or XML schemas and ontologies, matching is an operator which identifies those nodes in the two structures which semantically correspond to one another. For example, applied to file systems it can identify that a folder labeled “Medical Practitioner” is semantically equivalent to another folder “Medical Doctor” because they are synonyms in English.
Semantic matching represents a fundamental technique in many applications in areas such as resource discovery, HR and recruitment, data integration, data migration, query translation, peer to peer networks, agent communication, schema and ontology merging. It using is also being investigated in other areas such as event processing. In fact, it has been proposed as a valid solution to the semantic heterogeneity problem, namely managing the diversity in knowledge. Interoperability among people of different cultures and languages, having different viewpoints and using different terminology has always been a huge problem. Especially with the advent of the Web and the consequential information explosion, the problem seems to be emphasized. People face the concrete problem to retrieve, disambiguate and integrate information coming from a wide variety of sources.
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