Edward J. Barkmeyer

Semantic mediation for standard-based B2B interoperability

A semantic-mediation architecture advances traditional approaches for standard-based business-to-business interoperability. The architecture formally models a business domain in a reference ontology and annotates domain message schemas to define public and proprietary reconciliation rule sets. Enterprises can use the rule sets to implement standard-based message interfaces and to translate message content between their proprietary message forms. An implementation of the semantic-mediation architecture augments a general applications-integration toolset developed for the Athena European FP 6 project. The implementation demonstrates the architectures feasibility and suggests directions for future tool enhancements.

The Integrated Manufacturing Data Administration System (IMDAS) - An Overview

Abstract Automated manufacturing requires sharing of data among control, sensory and administrative processes. Since these processes are invariably distributed over many different computer systems, we claim that a distributed data system is necessary. Unlike most extant data systems, a manufacturing enterprise requires support for: diverse computer systems, data systems and databases; real-lime data access; and integration of new systems into a running complex. This paper briefly discusses these issues and describes a prototype implementation of a distributed data system that addresses them.

A semantic-mediation architecture for interoperable supply-chain applications

This paper presents a semantic-mediation architecture that enables standards-based interoperability between heterogeneous supply-chain applications. The architecture was implemented using a state-of-the-art semantic-mediation toolset for design-time and run-time integration tasks. The design-time tools supported a domain ontology definition, message annotations, message schema transformations and reconciliation rules specifications. The run-time tools performed exchanges, transformations, and reconciliations of the messages. The architecture supports a supply-chain integration scenario where heterogeneous automotive manufacturing supply-chain applications exchange inventory information.

Semantic B2B-integration Using an Ontological Message Metamodel

E-Business applications are often required to use different, incompatible, message sets to implement message interfaces for a business-to-business (B2B) communication. This makes communication with every new partner a new interoperability problem. In this article, we present a semantic-mediation architecture that provides for interoperable B2B data exchange. The mediation process is based on an Ontological Metamodel of message schemas and messages, and uses existing reference business ontologies. An approach for message schema semantic reconciliation and annotation is devised to support the mediation. We demonstrate the approach on a scenario that involves two incompatible message interfaces, one UN/EDIFACT based and another OAGIS XML based.

INTEROPERABLE SUPPLY-CHAIN APPLICATIONS: MESSAGE METAMODEL-BASED SEMANTIC RECONCILIATION OF B2B MESSAGES

Supply-chain applications exchange numerous electronic business-to-business (B2B) messages of varied types. Traditionally, prior to a message exchange, partners adopt one particular message specification that constrains message structure and syntax to implement compatible application message interfaces. However, in open, dynamic supply-chains, the applications need to interact even though their message interfaces are based on different, yet incompatible message specifications. To achieve such interactions, we propose the Message Metamodel-based semantic reconciliation of B2B messages. The Message Metamodel is a novel, ontological form that provides for common representation of B2B message specifications and messages of various syntaxes, such as Extensible Markup Language (XML) or Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). The experimental investigation showed that proposed semantic reconciliation architecture built atop the Message Metamodel (1) insulates the reconciliation activities from the specific message syntaxes, (2) supports the reconciliation of messages irrespective of message standards used, and (3) enables seamless interoperable message exchange between heterogeneous supply-chain applications.