iMAP: Discovering Complex Semantic Matches between Database Schemas

Summary: iMAP semi-automates schema matching beyond 1-1 by exploring a large/infinite space for complex matches (e.g., address = concat(city, state)). It uses specialized searchers, domain knowledge, integrity constraints, and overlap data, with explanations to justify matches and accelerate convergence on real-world schemas. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: h4e48a957e9dd6cd4
Venue: SIGMOD
Year: 2004
Pagerank: 9.2816844e-05
Overall Rank: 1,967 | 86.82%
DOI: 10.1145/1007568.1007612

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Robin Dhamankar (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
2. Yoonkyong Lee (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
3. AnHai Doan (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
4. Alon Halevy (University of Washington)
5. Pedro Domingos (University of Washington)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{dhamankar_sigmod04,
        title = {{iMAP: Discovering Complex Semantic Matches between Database Schemas}},
        author = {Dhamankar, Robin and Lee, Yoonkyong and Doan, AnHai and Halevy, Alon and Domingos, Pedro},
        series = {{SIGMOD} '04},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} International Conference on Management of Data},
        publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
        doi = {10.1145/1007568.1007612},
        url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1007568.1007612},
        year = {2004}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 16 of 16 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
790	How to ConQueR Why-Not Questions	2010	SIGMOD	0.00013929166
1,673	Bootstrapping Pay-As-You-Go Data Integration Systems	2008	SIGMOD	9.9018228e-05
2,587	Tuning Schema Matching Software using Synthetic Scenarios	2005	VLDB	8.241309e-05
2,608	Auto-Join: Joining Tables by Leveraging Transformations	2017	VLDB	8.209962e-05
3,257	InfoGather+: Semantic Matching and Annotation of Numeric and Time-Varying Attributes in Web Tables	2013	SIGMOD	7.4732058e-05
3,313	Multi-column Substring Matching for Database Schema Translation	2006	VLDB	7.4160617e-05
3,756	Discovering Linkage Points over Web Data	2013	VLDB	7.0275986e-05
4,444	Auto-Transform: Learning-to-Transform by Patterns	2020	VLDB	6.5812416e-05
5,219	Mapping Maintenance for Data Integration Systems	2005	VLDB	6.2121251e-05
6,324	Putting Context into Schema Matching	2006	VLDB	5.7958172e-05
6,467	Synthesizing Type-Detection Logic for Rich Semantic Data Types using Open-source Code	2018	SIGMOD	5.7580747e-05
6,608	Explain3D: Explaining Disagreements in Disjoint Datasets	2019	VLDB	5.7187078e-05
7,105	Synthesizing Products for Online Catalogs	2011	VLDB	5.5821417e-05
8,817	Extending Relational Query Optimization to Dynamic Schemas for Information Integration in Multidatabases	2007	SIGMOD	5.2565446e-05
8,851	Just-In-Time Query Retrieval Over Partially Indexed Data on Structured P2P Overlays	2008	SIGMOD	5.2489348e-05
9,203	Analyzing and Revising Data Integration Schemas to Improve Their Matchability	2008	VLDB	5.1946952e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 10 of 10 cited papers.

Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
24	Data Integration: A Theoretical Perspective	2002	PODS	0.00055201845
271	Reconciling Schemas of Disparate Data Sources: A Machine-Learning Approach	2001	SIGMOD	0.00022566676
298	Generic Schema Matching with Cupid	2001	VLDB	0.00021849408
399	COMA - A system for flexible combination of schema matching approaches	2002	VLDB	0.00019094502
435	Mining Database Structure; Or, How to Build a Data Quality Browser	2002	SIGMOD	0.00018277436
466	Using Schema Matching to Simplify Heterogeneous Data Translation	1998	VLDB	0.00017746564
800	Statistical Schema Matching across Web Query Interfaces	2003	SIGMOD	0.00013834019
823	On Schema Matching with Opaque Column Names and Data Values	2003	SIGMOD	0.00013610136
1,054	Data-Driven Understanding and Refinement of Schema Mappings	2001	SIGMOD	0.00012253927
1,736	Using Schematically Heterogeneous Structures	1998	SIGMOD	9.7450722e-05

Semantically Similar Papers

#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	14,046	U-MAP: A System for Usage-Based Schema Matching and Mapping	2011	SIGMOD
2	184	Schema Mapping as Query Discovery	2000	VLDB
3	9,202	The Role of Schema Matching in Large Enterprises	2009	CIDR
4	3,989	On the Complexity of Deriving Schema Mappings from Database Instances	2008	PODS
5	3,407	Designing and Refining Schema Mappings via Data Examples	2011	SIGMOD
6	9,986	Meta-Mappings for Schema Mapping Reuse	2019	VLDB
7	399	COMA - A system for flexible combination of schema matching approaches	2002	VLDB
8	6,324	Putting Context into Schema Matching	2006	VLDB
9	9,203	Analyzing and Revising Data Integration Schemas to Improve Their Matchability	2008	VLDB
10	6,247	MapMerge: Correlating Independent Schema Mappings	2010	VLDB