In metadata, a vocabulary-based transformation (VBT) is a transformation aided by the use of a semantic equivalence statements within a controlled vocabulary.

Many organizations today require communication between one or more computers. Although many standards exist to exchange data between computers such as HTML or e-Mail, there are still much structured information that needs to be exchanged between computers that is not standardized. The process of mapping one source of data into another is often a slow and labor intensive process.

VBT is a possible way to avoid much of the time and cost of manual data mapping using traditional Extract, transform and load technologies.

History

The term vocabulary-based transformation was first defined by Roy Shulte of the Gartner Group around May of 2003 and appeared in annual "hype-cycle" for integration.

Application

VBT allows computer systems integrators to more automatically "look up" the definitions of data elements in a centralized data dictionary and use that definition and the equivalent mappings to transform that data element into a foreign namespace.

The Web Ontology Language (OWL) language also support three semantic equivalence statements.

Companies or products

• IONA Technologies
• Contivo
• enLeague Systems
• ItemField
• Unicorn Solutions
• Vitria Technology
• Zonar

See also

• metadata
• Controlled vocabulary
• Data dictionary
• Semantic spectrum
• Semantic equivalence
• XSLT
• Enterprise Application Integration

External links

• Gartner Glossary of Terms Gartner definition Vocabulary-based transformation
• Gartner Hype Cycle 2003