Research And Implementation Of CORBA/XML Based Information Integration For Virtual Manufacturing Organizations

As one kind of advanced manufacturing system, virtual manufacturing organization (VMO) relies on the intensive application of network and information technologies, and processes the properties of distributed and flat networked organization structure as well as decentralized parallel mechanism of management and control. Its successful operation as well as coordination of membership enterprises therefore requires for vast amount of sharing and interoperation of data and information. In this sense, information integration is the key to the survival of VMOs.This thesis focuses on some key technologies for the information integration of VMOs. First of all, an open software bus is proposed based on CORBA-based distributed object management technology. A plug-in-and-play data integration mechanism has been implemented with this software bus, which is suitable to the distributed environment of VMO's. This mechanism controls the sharing/exchange of data through relevant protocols, and accomplishes the registration and location of objects to be integrated. The property of 'plug-in-and-play' ensures the reusability of codes. With this, the insertion and deletion operations do not have any influence on the other objects in the system, which leads to the flexibility, scalability and reusability of the system.An XML-based public adapt model is then introduced. Based on this, the mapping between XML schema and heterogeneous data schema is investigated, with emphasis being put on the analysis of the rule of reflection between XML schema and relationship pattern.Based on the results of the researches on the above key technologies, and aiming at some practical application, a CORBA/XML based integration system for VMO has been designed and partially implemented. Issues such as the plug-in-and-play of distributed objects as well as region-based management strategy have been discussed for the system design and implementation.The core of the CORBA/XML based solution proposed in this thesis with respect to the characteristics of distributed and heterogeneous data of VMOs includes: a CORBA-based multi-layer C/S framework for solving the problem of distribution, and XML-based public schema for tackling the difficulty of heterogeneousness.