Schema matching, the problem of finding mappings between the attributes of two semantically related database schemas, is an
important aspect of many database applications such as schema integration, data warehousing, and electronic commerce. Unfortunately,
schema matching remains largely a manual, labor-intensive process. Furthermore, the effort required is typically linear in
the number of schemas to be matched; the next pair of schemas to match is not any easier than the previous pair. In this paper
we describe a system, called Automatch, that uses machine learning techniques to automate schema matching. Based primarily
on Bayesian learning, the system acquires probabilistic knowledge from examples that have been provided by domain experts.
This knowledge is stored in a knowledge base called the attribute dictionary. When presented with a pair of new schemas that need to be matched (and their corresponding database instances), Automatch
uses the attribute dictionary to find an optimal matching. We also report initial results from the Automatch project.