A Quantum-Leap into Schema Matching: Beyond 1-to-1 Matchings

Schema matching refers to the task of identifying corresponding attributes of different database relation schemas to enable the efficient integration of the associated datasets. We model the task of finding suitable 1:N/N:1 global matchings in relational schemas as an optimization problem. We show that this optimization problem is NP-hard. We then translate the optimization problem into the problem of minimizing a particular rational-valued function on binary variables. The latter enables us to utilize modern quantum algorithms for solving the global matching problem, a crucial stage in schema matching. We also report on preliminary experimental results that serve as a proof-of-concept for our approach.