Explication and semantic querying of enterprise information systems

Many researches show that the ability of independent, heterogeneous enterprises’ information systems to interoperate is related to the challenges of making their semantics explicit and formal, so that the messages are not merely exchanged, but interpreted, without ambiguity. In this paper, we present an approach to overcome those challenges by developing a method for explication of the systems’ implicit semantics. We define and implement the method for the generation of local ontologies, based on the databases of their systems. In addition, we describe an associated method for the translation between semantic and SQL queries, a process in which implicit semantics of the EIS’s databases and explicit semantics of the local ontologies become interrelated. Both methods are demonstrated in the case of creating the local ontology and the semantic querying of OpenERP Enterprise Resource Planning system, for the benefit of the collaborative supply chain planning.