Ontology Merging and Data Schema Integration: An Approach to Identify Semantic Similarity and Resolve Schematic Heterogeneity in Interoperable GIS Application

Data and information sharing is driven by the need to maintain more accurate and up to date spatial temporal database and at the same time reduce the data acquisition and maintenance costs. This paper discusses the need of a database schema integration and ontology merging to support interoperability GIS applications. This enable translation query from one database schema into another to support finally the development of XML-GML based document. Research results shows the potential use of the approaches to solve problems associated with seamless GIS based information sharing.