Defining Semantics for Data Element with Semantic Tree

Without explicit and formal semantic approach, data element is restricted in automatic data modeling and other application. The precise semantics for data element is supplied with ontology. Semantics factors of data element are analyzed at first. The concepts from domain ontology are considered as atomic concepts and are considered as semantic element concepts of data element. A structure called semantic tree was presented that the relationships among the concepts of data element, such as properties, object classes and representations, are expressed explicitly, formally and intuitionally. Supplied with constrains to semantic tree, the application data elements can be defined simply. For searching data element and mapping data model with data element automatically, the paper presents an arithmetic based on semantic tree to measure the semantic similarity between data elements is presented. Compared with others, the semantic tree has some obvious strongpoint.