Ontology-driven automated generation of data entry interfaces to databases

This paper discusses an ontology based approach for the automatic generation of data entry interfaces to databases. An existing domain ontology is mapped to a system domain model, which a domain expert can then specialise using their domain expertise, for their data entry needs as required for individual projects. Based on this specialised domain knowledge, the system automatically generates appropriate data entry interfaces with the aid of a presentation model. By constraining the data entered to a term definition ontology and utilising appropriate defined domain terminology the quality of the collected data can be improved. Compared with traditional model-based user automatic interface development environments, this approach also has the potential to reduce the labour requirements for the expert developer.