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.

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.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an architectural paradigm that allows building of infrastructures for diverse application interaction and integration via services across different platforms, domains of technology and locations. SOA differs from traditional architectures, as it focuses on integrating capabilities that are distributed and implemented using a mixture of technologies. SOA provides a set of methodologies and strategies to accomplish interoperability and integration among different technology stacks.   Vattenfall is the fifth the largest energy supplier within Europe. Having operational systems in different countries brings the challenge of integrating all these distributed systems and this integration is a vital requirement for Vattenfall. The company is currently using Microsoft proprietary products to achieve integration across different technological platform, but requires a better integration infrastructure which is easily extensible and cost effective.   This thesis investigates the impact of implementing Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) using open source or proprietary software products within Vattenfall, from technological and financial perspectives. For this purpose, different technical and non-technical function blocks are identified which are essential for the implementation of SOA. These function blocks are mapped with SOA solutions provided by Red Hat’s JBoss Open Source SOA Platform and Microsoft’s SOA Platform. After mapping, a vendor specific technical and non-technical comparative analysis is carried out based on the function blocks, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each vendor.   Finally, an evaluation scheme is purposed based on the technical comparative analysis of vendors, SOA solution cost and SOA competence required. The results from this evaluation scheme are used to recommend the best solution vendor for Vattenfall Nordic. Moreover, this evaluation scheme can also be used to facilitate management in arriving at an appropriate decision about implementation of SOA, while remaining within their requirements and constraints.