1 Introduction

Data are today the most valuable and precious asset within organizations; however, they also represent an ongoing challenge for businesses since data is continually growing in variety, complexity, as well as fragmentation. As a matter of fact, most of the data collected and possessed by financial organizations reside in a wide array of “siloed” (i.e., fragmented) and heterogeneous systems and databases. Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) databases, Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) databases, data warehouses, and data lakes are only few examples within the data landscape. Furthermore, intensive and heavy data consumption tasks are usually performed over OLAP systems, which lead financial organizations in transferring data from OLTP, data lakes, and other systems to OLAP systems based on intrusive and expensive extract-transform-load (ETL) processes. In several cases, ETLs consume 75–80% of the budget allocated to data analytics while being a setback to seamless interoperability across different data systems using up-to-date data. Beyond the lack of integrated OLTP and OLAP processes, financial and insurance organizations have no unified way of accessing and querying vast amounts of structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data, which increases the effort and cost that are associated with the development of big data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Except for data fragmentation, there is also a lack of interoperability across diverse datasets that refer to the same data entities with similar semantics. This is a main obstacle to datasets sharing across different stakeholders and to enabling more connected applications and services that span multiple systems across the financial supply chain. The impacts these aspects have on data management are huge and are forcing both financial and insurance organizations to research, rethink, and apply new strategies and approaches for data management.

Data management can be defined as [1] “the development, execution, and supervision of plans, policies, programs, and practices that deliver, control, protect, and enhance the value of data and information assets throughout their life cycles.” The inclusion of these disciplines triggers a transformation process that allows organizations to become data-driven [2], i.e., to ensure the right usage of data at the right time to support operational business intelligence (BI). The activities related to data management span multiple areas from data architecture and data modeling and design to data governance and security passing through data interoperability and data persistence operations. This chapter focuses on the data integration, data interoperability, and data modeling aspects of data management.

2 Background: Relevant Concepts and Definitions for the INFINITECH Semantic Interoperability Framework

2.1 Interoperability

There is no unique definition of interoperability in the literature since the concept has different meanings depending on the context. As a matter of fact, according to ISO/IEC 2382-01 [3], interoperability is defined as “The capability to communicate, execute program, or transfer data among various functional units in a manner that requires the user to have little or no knowledge of the unique characteristics of those units.” According to ETSI’s technical committee TISPAN [4], interoperability is “the ability of equipment from different manufacturers (or different systems) to communicate together on the same infrastructure (same system), or on another.” Moreover, EICTA defines interoperability as [5] “the ability of two or more networks, systems, devices, applications or components to exchange information between them and to use the information so exchanged.” Based on these definitions, interoperability is always about making sure that systems are capable of sharing data between each other and of understanding the exchanged data [6]. In this context, the word “understand” includes the content, the format, as well as the semantics of the exchanged data [7]. Interoperability ranges over four different levels [8], namely:

  1. 1.

    Physical/technical interoperability: It is concerned with the physical connection of hardware and software platforms.

  2. 2.

    Syntactical interoperability: It is concerned with data format, i.e., it relates on how the data are structured.

  3. 3.

    Semantic interoperability: It is concerned with the meaningful interaction between systems, devices, components, and/or applications.

  4. 4.

    Organizational interoperability: It is concerned with the way organizations share data and information (Fig. 4.1).

Fig. 4.1
figure 1

Different interoperability levels according to [8]

2.1.1 Semantic Interoperability

Semantics plays a main role in interoperability for ensuring that exchanged information between counterparts are provided with sense. For computer systems, this notion of semantic interoperability translates in the ability of two or more systems to exchange data between them, by means of precise unambiguous and shared meaning, which enables readily access and reuse of the exchanged data. The concept of Semantic Web [9] was introduced by World Wide Web (WWW) founder Tim Berners-Lee in the 1990s and has been widely used in research and industry contexts. It has also given rise to the development of the concepts of Semantic Web services and more recently of Semantic Internet of Things (IoT) concepts [10,11,12]. These concepts aim to facilitate collaboration across semantically heterogeneous environments toward contributing to a connected world of consuming and provisioning devices. This connected world can potentially exchange and combine data to offer new or augmented services. However, the accomplishment of this vision is associated with several challenges due to the existence of a variety of standards, legacy systems constraints, and tools. The semantic interoperability process can, therefore, focus on different viewpoints of semantic aspects, such as the exchanged data description or the systems interaction terms. As a prominent example, in IoT systems, the interoperability specifications can be used to define the meaning of a given sensor or IoT device, but also to provide information on the units of its value and on the protocols that can be used to connect and extract the value from the device.

2.1.2 Semantic Models

The provision of semantic information modeling can be implemented in various ways, including key-value, markup scheme, graphics, object-role, logic-based, and ontology-based models [13]. From this set, the key-value type offers the simplest data structure but lacks expressivity and inference. On the other hand, the ontology-based model provides the best way to express complex concepts and interrelations, being therefore the most popular model for elaborating semantic models.

2.1.3 Ontologies

The inherent semantic interoperability features of the Semantic Web have been mostly grounded on the use of ontologies for knowledge representation. In most cases, there exists a top-level ontology (or domain ontology) and multiple sub-domain ontologies, each one representative of a more specific domain. With the use of ontologies, entities can be described in very comprehensive ways [14].

2.1.4 Semantic Annotations

Semantic annotation is the process of attaching additional information to any element of data comprised of some sort of document. Ontologies on their own are not sufficient to fulfill the semantic interoperability requirements needed to enable data readability by machines. This is because of the differences and inconsistencies across different data sources and their ontologies. Semantic annotation has been widely used to fill this gap by creating links between the disparate ontologies and the original sources [15].

2.2 Methodologies for Ontology Engineering

2.2.1 METHONTOLOGY

METHONTOLOGY has been developed by the Ontology Engineering Group at the Universidade Tecnica de Madrid. It is a structured method to build ontologies initially developed in the domain of chemicals [16]. The methodology guides the ontology development process throughout the whole ontology life cycle. It consists of the following main development activities:

  • Specification: It is concerned with the definition of the objectives of the ontology and of the end users, i.e., it frames the domain.

  • Conceptualization: It is concerned with developing an initial conceptual representation/model of a perceived view of the application domain. A set of intermediate representations are here used to organize the concepts to be easily understood by both ontology and domain experts.

  • Formalization: It is concerned with the implementation of a semi-computable model from the conceptual model generated in the previous activity.

  • Integration: It is concerned with knowledge reuse, i.e., extracting and integrating definitions and concepts from already built ontologies.

  • Implementation: It is concerned with the implementation of fully computational models using various ontology languages.

  • Maintenance: It is concerned with any update to the ontology.

Furthermore, as part of the methodology, several orthogonal supporting activities are also identified to manage and support the development ones. These activities span knowledge acquisition, documentation, and evaluation.

2.2.2 SAMOD

The Simplified Agile Methodology for Ontology Development (SAMOD) [17] focuses on designing and developing well-developed and well-documented models from significant domain data and/or descriptions. It consists of three simple and small steps that are part of an iterative process aimed to produce preliminary and incremental results. The three steps can be labeled as:

  1. 1.

    Test case definition: This is about writing down a motivating scenario, being as close as possible to the language commonly used for talking about the domain.

  2. 2.

    Merging current model with modelet: This merges the modelet included in the defined test case with the current model.

  3. 3.

    Refactoring current model: This refactors the current model shared among all the defined test cases.

2.2.3 DILIGENT

The methodology for distributed, loosely controlled, and evolving engineering of ontologies (DILIGENT) [18] is a methodological approach intended to support domain experts in a distributed setting to engineer and evolve ontologies. It is based on rhetorical structure theory, viz., the DILIGENT model of ontology engineering by argumentation. The process comprises five main activities, namely:

  1. 1.

    Build: It concerns with the development of ontologies by having different stakeholders, with different needs and purposes that are typically distributed.

  2. 2.

    Local Adaptation: It concerns with the usage and adaptation of the developed ontology. By using the ontology, many updates can be necessary due, for example, to new business requirements and/or new arising needs.

  3. 3.

    Analysis: It concerns with the analysis of any local request for update. As a matter of fact, local ontologies can be updated, but the shared ontology will be updated only after the analysis of the update request.

  4. 4.

    Revision: It concerns with the constant revision of the shared ontology to guarantee the alignment with the local ones.

  5. 5.

    Local Update: It concerns with the update of the local ontologies after a new shared ontology is available.

2.2.4 UPON Lite

The lightweight unified process for ontology building (UPON Lite) methodology [19] is a simple, agile ontology engineering approach and/or method that is intended to place the end users and domain experts at the center of the overall ontology building process while avoiding the presence of ontology engineers. Therefore, the main pillars of the process are (i) the adoption of a fully user-centered approach, (ii) the adoption of a social collaborative approach to collect domain expert knowledge to achieve all the steps in the method, and (iii) an ontology building method based on six main activities. The six activities and/or steps of the UPON Lite method are the following (named and/or labeled according to the produced outcome):

  1. 1.

    Domain terminology: It is concerned with producing the list of all the fundamental domain terms that characterize the observed domain.

  2. 2.

    Domain glossary: It provides the definition and possible synonyms of the domain terms.

  3. 3.

    Taxonomy: It concerns with the organization of the domain terms according to an “ISA” hierarchy.

  4. 4.

    Predication: It concerns with the identification of those terms that represent properties and/or relations between other terms and/or concepts.

  5. 5.

    Parthood: It concerns with the analysis of the structure of the identified concepts and/or entities in order to elicit their (de-)composition hierarchies.

  6. 6.

    Ontology: It concerns with the production of the formally encoded ontology.

3 INFINITECH Semantic Interoperability Framework

The INFINITECH Semantic Interoperability Framework is a commonly agreed approach to enable semantic interoperability between applications and services within the INFINITECH platform while defining basic interoperability guidelines in the form of common principles, models, and recommendations. Furthermore, as part of the framework, ontology mapping processes are also considered to establish a common platform to deal with multiple ontologies. The proposed framework has been designed by combining a top-down and bottom-up approach (hybrid approach) as shown in Fig. 4.2. The latter – also called pilot characterization – is aimed to describe the specific application domain for each one of the test beds and pilot within the project. The main objective here is the identification, the definition, and the clear description of the context of application in terms of domain terminologies, glossaries, and taxonomies. The former – also called state-of-the-art (SotA) analysis – is aimed to identify reference ontologies for considered domain (finance and insurance); these ontologies are not linked to a specific application domain. The main objective here is the identification of a common and above all generic set of core concepts and relationships between them that can be used as top ontology, i.e., the glue between diverse specific domain ontologies for the same context of application. In both cases, the combination of the results of the pilot characterization and SotA analysis is used as inputs of the INFINITECH methodology for semantic models and ontologies and used for generating INFINITECH models, as well as baseline for the development of transformers that needs to be used to exploit all the features and full potentiality of the INFINITECH platform. Therefore, the hybrid approach aims firstly to design a high-level normalized and domain-specific enterprise model and secondly to link this model to the business-specific data.

Fig. 4.2
figure 2

Hybrid approach for interoperability in INFINITECH

The INFINITECH Semantic Interoperability Framework focuses primarily on the planning/designing and development/implementation of the objectives, infrastructure, and necessary deliverables to ensure interoperability in digital finance applications. The successful execution of the planning/development and development/implementation phases – of the framework – strictly depends on the presence of a data governance layer. As pointed out in [20], data governance is a business-driven process where specific business data representations are aligned to data domain. To do that, several data governance procedures have been carried out, namely (see Fig. 4.3):

  • Identifying potential data sources and data owners

  • Assigning roles and responsibilities to data management processes

  • Defining the granularity of the data according to the type of applications needed to deliver it

  • Alignment with the overall reference architecture

  • Defining schema identification requirements and protocol standards for common data formats

  • Developing methodologies and best practices for modeling data, developing ontologies, defining business glossaries, etc.

  • Setting principles for data onboarding and consumption

Fig. 4.3
figure 3

Mapping data governance activities with proposed hybrid approach

3.1 Methodology for Semantic Models, Ontology Engineering, and Prototyping

Ontologies are the baseline for developing semantic interoperability applications. Ontologies are conceptual models – constituted by interlinked concepts related to a specific domain – of an observed reality. Since ontologies play a fundamental role in INFINITECH while providing the necessary mechanisms for describing test beds and pilot application domain, then a systematic engineering approach is needed to facilitate the design and development of high-quality and, above all, pilot-aligned ontologies to reference top-level ontologies for the domain.

As shown in Fig. 4.4, the INFINITECH methodology for ontology engineering shares terminology, definitions, and activities and/or steps with the SAMOD methodology. It is an iterative process that is aimed at building semantic models and ontologies. It is organized as a sequence of four sequential steps, namely:

Fig. 4.4
figure 4

Methodology for semantic models and ontology engineering

  1. 1.

    Collecting. This step collects all the information about the application domain. It involves the following tasks and/or activities:

    • Pilot Analysis: Write down the motivating scenario and identify user expectation by writing down user stories and clarifying everything by using a set of competency questions (user characterization).

    • Conceptualization: Write down domain terminology, glossary of terms, and taxonomies of concepts.

  2. 2.

    Building. This step builds a new interoperability test case (aka modelet). The modelet is a stand-alone model describing the application domain for the considered pilot and/or test bed. The step involves the following tasks and/or activities:

    • Creation of a stand-alone model for the pilot or test bed describing the relevant aspects of the application domain.

    • Connection with the top reference ontology(ies). This activity is aimed to reuse as much as possible already defined concepts, relations, and properties while pruning all the elements that are superfluous.

  3. 3.

    Merging. This step refines the generated modelet with concepts and relations extracted from reference ontologies for the domain to determine more generic domain ontologies. The step involves the following tasks and/or activities:

    • Merge modelets in the same pilot/test bed.

    • Merge modelets between different pilots/test beds within the same application domain.

    • Refinement of the current modelet.

    • Merge modelets with reference ontologies.

    • Implement generated modelets.

  4. 4.

    Refactoring. This step provides the final ontology and semantic model as conceptual schema to be used within INFINITECH. This model delivers the complete description and characterization of the application domain aligned with reference ontologies while enabling any user of the INFINITECH application to seamlessly access diverse ontologies and thus concrete data.

  5. 5.

    Linking: This step links the refactored models to real data while generating the so-called linked knowledge graph.

Two iteration cycles (analysis and revision and adaptation) are part of the methodology. The analysis and revision iteration (executed essentially during the building step) aims at analyzing and reviewing the building process to guarantee the alignment with the domain expert’s expectations and requirements. The result of this step and its related iterations is a preliminary model also called modelet. The adaptation iteration includes the steps collecting, defining, and merging and aims at refining the generated modelets to cope with new knowledge and/or any change in user characterization, user needs, application domain, or, more in general, any change that could directly have an impact on the way domain experts describe their own business and – thus – application domains.

Generated modelets are very specific and targeted conceptual models that need to be filled and populated with dynamic data from typically heterogeneous and distributed resources. Here is where the semantic graphs and/or knowledge graphs play a fundamental role.

3.1.1 Modeling Method

The main result of applying the methodology for semantic models and ontology engineering is an evolving conceptual schema (e.g., ontology) and linked knowledge graph that empowers the INFINITECH platform to access, query, use and process/analyze data and/or information from heterogeneous and distributed sources.

The conceptual schema is determined by using an evolving prototyping (i.e., a foundation of agile software methodologies like DevOps) approach, where it grows up by layers while continuously delivering software prototypes. In particular, the conceptual model is the combination of three layers, according to [2]:

  • Top-level ontology: Describes at very high-level concepts of interest for the domain

  • Domain ontology: Describes specific concepts typically related to sub-domains of the top-level model

  • Application ontology: Describes very specific concepts related to the particular application and scenario

The layered model allows easy adaptation and extension while enabling for knowledge reuse, i.e., to reuse as much as possible already available ontologies and models. As a matter of fact, this model facilitates the adaptation to various applications as well as new domains (Fig. 4.5).

Fig. 4.5
figure 5

Semantic and ontology modeling method

3.1.2 Envisioned Roles and Functions in Semantic Models, Ontology Engineering, and Prototyping

Several actors are typically involved in the process of defining, specifying, and developing semantic models and ontologies. The ontology engineering process is a collaborative process among several stakeholders. Since the main objective of the INFINITECH methodology for semantic models and ontology engineering is to provide a stakeholder-centric approach, it is necessary to identify the main roles and functions of the distinct actors of the process (see Fig. 4.6). The engineering process starts by having a small group composed by the following stakeholders: domain experts, end users, knowledge, and ontology engineers. The actors assume a distinct role considering the specific step within the methodology. In particular, during the collecting step, they assume the role of data user since they are essentially individuals who intend to use data for a specific purpose and are accountable for setting requirements. During the building, merging, and refactoring, ontology engineers play the role of data trustee since they are responsible for managing the data and related metadata, data classifications, and conceptual schemas. Furthermore, during the analysis and revision process, the actors play the role of data stewards since they are responsible in ensuring the data policies and data standards are adhered to. Finally, during the linking step, the ontology engineer plays the role of data creator by physically creating and linking data to models as defined by the data trustee. This data is then ready to be consumed by end users.

Fig. 4.6
figure 6

Data governance: actors, roles, and functions

4 Applying the Methodology: Connecting the Dots

This section illustrates the INFNITECH methodology for semantic models, ontology engineering, and prototyping, using exemplary data from considered pilots and selected supporting technologies. INFINITECH pilots have typically their own very specific data with different formats, data structure and differently organized. To establish the foundation for interoperability between those pilots, in the same application domain, ontologies are needed. However, most of them have not a well-defined and well-established conceptual model of their own application domain (the so-called application ontology). Furthermore, the usage of reference ontologies (such as FIBO, LKIF, FIGI, etc.) alone becomes practically impossible due to the lack of a connection with the application ontology. Therefore, it is peremptory to provide firstly pilots with application ontologies.

4.1 Workflow and Technological Tools for Validation of the Methodology

The proposed methodology is an iterative process that aims at providing very specific and targeted models to be used by advanced analytic applications (typically outside to the INIFITECH platform). Figure 4.7 shows the main output of the methodology starting from the pilot characterization and how it is connected to the INIFINITECH platform.

Fig. 4.7
figure 7

Workflow and main deliverables and their connection

The collecting and building steps are initially used to define and build the conceptual model (modelet). The modelet needs to be merged, from one side to reference ontologies and from the other side to specific pilot conceptual model, and refactored to provide a very specific and highly targeted model. Finally, the model needs to be linked to real data from the pilot as the result of the linking step.

4.2 Collecting

The collecting step is the first step of the INFINITECH methodology and is aimed to characterize the application domain by providing three fundamental deliverables, namely (see Fig. 4.8):

  • Domain terminology: The complete list of terms that are relevant for the application domain.

  • Glossary of terms: The domain terminology enriched with the description of the term as well as possible synonyms. Furthermore, the object process actor modeling language (OPAL) semantic is also used at this stage that provides a first high-level classification of concepts.

  • Taxonomy of identified concepts: The list of terms represented/organized into hierarchies according to the “ISA” relationship.

Fig. 4.8
figure 8

Collecting step inputs and outputs

The output of this activity is then used – together with the description of available data – to create a conceptual model around the application domain during the next step: building.

4.3 Building and Merging

During the building step, a semantic approach is used where collected data are analyzed to understand the meaning of the data, as well as to identify the main concepts and relationships between them. The main result is a knowledge graph (see Fig. 4.9) that, in turn, represents the first step toward harmonization and standardization of data assets.

Fig. 4.9
figure 9

Pilot-specific knowledge graph

However, the knowledge graph needs to be further analyzed and refined to be connected to reference ontologies. This is done during the merging step where FIBO reference ontology is considered considering the domain of application.

At this stage, both pilot-specific and FIBO models have been analyzed to identify:

  • Common concepts

  • Connections and relations between the two models

The final knowledge graph is shown in Fig. 4.10.

Fig. 4.10
figure 10

Pilot-specific knowledge graph aligned with FIBO

The following FIBO concepts have been used for modeling the final knowledge graph of the INFINITECH real-time risk assessment pilot system:

  • Currency: Medium of exchange value, defined by reference to the geographical location of the monetary authorities responsible for it.

  • Quoted Exchange Rate: An exchange rate quoted at a specific point in time, for a given block amount of currency as quoted against another (base) currency. An exchange rate of R represents a rate of R units of the quoted currency to 1 unit of the base currency.

  • Value at Risk: Measures and quantifies the level of financial risk within a firm, portfolio, or position over a specific time frame.

  • Fund Investment Restriction Set: Limitations that apply to the fund as a whole, such as risk factors. These are used to determine whether the fund is appropriate for a given type of investor to invest in.

  • Currency Instrument: Financial instrument used for the purposes of currency trading.

The result of the merging step is a connected graph – aligned with FIBO ontology – capable of spanning organizational concepts that are relevant for the selected application scenario and use cases.

4.4 Refactoring and Linking

The refactoring and linking stages aim at concretely developing and implementing knowledge graph produced after the merging stage while also linking it to the pilot-specific real data. Therefore, it is mainly focused on the selection of the model serialization format (RDF, JSON-LD, etc.) and concrete supporting technology for creating linked knowledge graphs. During these steps, selected technology is applied to support the overall process of data harmonization (according to FIBO) and data-sharing and provisioning to any external application that needs to use them. The main result of these steps is a linked knowledge graph that can be queried.

At this point, two technologies have been selected to show the repeatability of the process, regardless of the specific environment deployed within the pilot, namely, (1) dataworld.com Footnote 1, a cloud-based collaborative data catalog aimed to supply data integration and analysis, and (2) GraphDB Footnote 2, an RDF database for knowledge graphs with extended features for providing integration and transformation of data. With both solutions, the execution of the validation stages of the workflow was attempted, with support of other technologies used in INFINITECH, such as LeanXcale database for the origin data, Node-RED for client application, or Docker for deployment. As a result, a simple architecture was designed. The architecture specifies the necessary elements of the system, along with their internal interfaces and communications (Fig. 4.11).

Fig. 4.11
figure 11

Communication architecture of the validation setup

4.4.1 Data Ingestion

The first necessary step for validation of the modeling methodology is to pull the real data from the source into the selected technology. Currently, it is already possible to import data from a wide range of sources (local files, cloud locations, different databases such as PostgreSQL or MySQL using JDBC connectors, etc.) and formats (CSV, JSON Lines, etc.). In Fig. 4.12, a snippet of the datasets used can be seen:

Fig. 4.12
figure 12

Snippets of the origin datasets (trades and ticks), in CSV format

After importing the datasets, the data is then able to be accessed, combined (as seen in Fig. 4.13, where the imported data was preprocessed into a single dataset), and used on the next steps.

Fig. 4.13
figure 13

Imported datasets from the test pilot

4.4.2 Semantic Alignment: Building and Merging

This is the stage where the semantic alignment model obtained by using the modeling methodology is executed. In the example given in Fig. 4.14, the mapping is constructed by using the mapping tool, by associating the items of the imported datasets with the modeled semantics.

Fig. 4.14
figure 14

Semantic mapping performed with GraphDB mapping tool

On the other hand, the developer of the semantic mappings can, for example, replicate the semantic alignment by using SPARQL queries (Fig. 4.15):

Fig. 4.15
figure 15

Semantic mapping with SPARQL query

4.4.3 Semantic Transformation: Generating a Queryable Knowledge Graphs

Once the mapping is specified, it can be used against the original dataset, to enable the transformation and, thus, to produce the semantic data. This implies that the resulting knowledge graph follows the semantic alignment that is provided by the merging stage. In the specific cases of the adopted frameworks, the user can invoke them to, for example, execute the relevant SPARQL queries, by using the REST API endpoints or any other solution that may be developed for the effect. In the current implementation, either running SPARQL queries or streaming data through HTTP request can fulfill the data transformation, which results on the generation of an RDF format dataset, such as the code snippet shown in Fig. 4.16.

Fig. 4.16
figure 16

RDF results resulting from the semantic alignment applied to the origin dataset

4.4.4 Data-Sharing/Provisioning

Finally, it is important that end users possess the necessary means to access and further use the generated data. As such, the set of solutions in use allow to directly download the RDF results from transformation process. Moreover, they enable the storage of the results as knowledge graphs which can later be retrieved using the REST APIs or other access points created.

Moreover, RDF compliant client applications can be developed to make use of such capability using the data to execute the desired analytics over the data.

In the scope of this validation process, a simple node.js client application was developed for demonstration, where a few analytic algorithms were applied to the RDF data. The latter data were consumed through one of the REST APIs, as presented in Fig. 4.17.

Fig. 4.17
figure 17

Analytics over RDF data generated from the origin datasets

5 Conclusions

This chapter presented a methodology for generating models that enable the transformation of data to semantically annotated data, in alignment with reference ontologies of financial and insurance sectors.

The outcomes (modelets) of the proposed methodology provide a simpler and more trustable way to generate and transform the original data into semantically meaningful data. In this way, the proposed methodology enhances the interoperability of different sources.

To validate the approach, state-of-the-art technological tools for the processing and management of tabular and RDF data were used. Leveraging these tools, it is demonstrated that the mapping process can be extremely simplified and, also, that it is applicable to different types of available solutions. As a matter of fact, the same results were obtained when applying the methodology into different sources of data or when using other types of mapping technologies.

Our future work involves the application and validation of the methodology at a larger scale, starting from its deployment and use in the digital finance systems that have been developed, deployed, and validated in the scope of the INFINITECH project.