Agent-based service-oriented architecture for heterogeneous data sources management in ubiquitous enterprise

Abstract

In a ubiquitous manufacturing environment, different devices such as radio frequency identification (RFID) technology are used to collect real-time data. Additionally, data is used by different enterprise information systems for supporting managerial decision making. Since data sources from applications and devices are characterized by multiple types of heterogeneities such as communication channels, blinding methods, and developing environments, the difficulty in managing heterogeneous data sources is greatly increased. This paper proposes an innovative Application Information Service (AIS) that serves as a middleware for information exchange in between different applications. The AIS possesses several key contributions. Firstly, AIS provides a centralized platform to manage distributed heterogeneous data sources so as to reduce the data duplications, increase consistency, and accuracy. Secondly, it combines software agent technologies with service-oriented architecture (SOA) so that services are capable of accomplishing tasks in an autonomous way without human intervention. Thirdly, agent-based service-oriented architecture paradigm is proposed to cultivate a collaborative environment to integrate different data sources as well as third party application providers.