University of SaskatchewanHARVEST
  • Login
  • Submit Your Work
  • About
    • About HARVEST
    • Guidelines
    • Browse
      • All of HARVEST
      • Communities & Collections
      • By Issue Date
      • Authors
      • Titles
      • Subjects
      • This Collection
      • By Issue Date
      • Authors
      • Titles
      • Subjects
    • My Account
      • Login
      JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.
      View Item 
      • HARVEST
      • Electronic Theses and Dissertations
      • Graduate Theses and Dissertations
      • View Item
      • HARVEST
      • Electronic Theses and Dissertations
      • Graduate Theses and Dissertations
      • View Item

      Towards a new approach for enterprise integration : the semantic modeling approach

      Thumbnail
      View/Open
      CompleteThesis.pdf (579.3Kb)
      Date
      2003-05-10
      Author
      Radhakrishnan, Ranga Prasad
      Type
      Thesis
      Degree Level
      Masters
      Metadata
      Show full item record
      Abstract
      Manufacturing today has become a matter of the effective and efficient application of information technology and knowledge engineering. Manufacturing firms’ success depends to a great extent on information technology, which emphasizes the integration of the information systems used by a manufacturing enterprise. This integration is also called enterprise application integration (here the term application means information systems or software systems). The methodology for enterprise application integration, in particular enterprise application integration automation, has been studied for at least a decade; however, no satisfactory solution has been found. Enterprise application integration is becoming even more difficult due to the explosive growth of various information systems as a result of ever increasing competition in the software market. This thesis aims to provide a novel solution to enterprise application integration. The semantic data model concept that evolved in database technology is revisited and applied to enterprise application integration. This has led to two novel ideas developed in this thesis. First, an ontology of an enterprise with five levels (following the data abstraction: generalization/specialization) is proposed and represented using unified modeling language. Second, both the ontology for the enterprise functions and the ontology for the enterprise applications are modeled to allow automatic processing of information back and forth between these two domains. The approach with these novel ideas is called the enterprise semantic model approach. The thesis presents a detailed description of the enterprise semantic model approach, including the fundamental rationale behind the enterprise semantic model, the ontology of enterprises with levels, and a systematic way towards the construction of a particular enterprise semantic model for a company. A case study is provided to illustrate how the approach works and to show the high potential of solving the existing problems within enterprise application integration.
      Degree
      Master of Science (M.Sc.)
      Department
      Mechanical Engineering
      Program
      Mechanical Engineering
      Supervisor
      Zhang, W. J. (Chris)
      Committee
      Watson, L. Glen; Oguocha, Ikechukwuka N.; Habibi, Saeid R.; Cooke, John
      Copyright Date
      May 2003
      URI
      http://hdl.handle.net/10388/etd-01242005-142314
      Subject
      Database Modeling
      Database Integration
      Software Integration
      Adapter
      UML
      Middleware
      Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)
      Ontology
      Enterprise Engineering
      Semantic Model
      Collections
      • Graduate Theses and Dissertations
      University of Saskatchewan

      University Library

      © University of Saskatchewan
      Contact Us | Disclaimer | Privacy