Similarity of XML-Schema Elements: a Structural and Information Content Approach

EXtensible Markup Language (XML)-Schemas are the emerging standards for describing and validating semi-structured documents across the Internet, due to the rich set of modeling constructors, types and constraints they provide. Semantic similarity is growing in importance in different settings, such as digital libraries, heterogeneous databases and, in particular, the Semantic Web. The focus of this paper is the definition of a method for determining semantic similarity of XML-Schema elements in the presence of type hierarchies. Such a method has been defined by combining and revisiting: (i) the information content approach, and (ii) a method for comparing the structural components of type declarations, inspired by the maximum weighted matching problem in bipartite graphs.