An Architecture for Semantic Enterprise Application Integration Standards

Summary

Large, industry-wide interoperability projects use syntax-based standards approaches to accomplish interoperable data exchange among enterprise applications. We are investigating Semantic Web to advance these approaches. In this paper, we describe an architecture for Semantic Enterprise Application Integration Standards as a basis for experimental assessment of the Semantic Web technologies to enhance these standards approaches. The architecture relies on automated translation of the XML Schema-based representation of business document content models into an OWL-based ontology. Based on this architecture, we use Semantic Web representation and reasoning mechanisms to support consistency checking of ontological constructs and constraints specified within the ontology. The proposed architecture is relevant (1) when managing multiple enterprise ontologies derived from, and dependent on, a common ontology and (2) when dealing with model-driven integration using customizable interface models and testing of such integration efforts.