SEMANTIC DATA INTEGRATION FOR PROCESS ENGINEERING DESIGN DATA

During the design phase of a chemical plant, information is typically created by various software tools and stored in different documents and databases. Unfortunately, the further processing of the data is often hindered by the structural, syntactic and semantic heterogeneities of the data sources. In fact the merging and consolidation of the data becomes virtually prohibitive when exclusively conventional database technologies are employed. Therefore, XML technologies as well as specific domain ontologies are increasingly applied in the context of data integration. Hence, this contribution gives an outline on an ongoing research project at the authors' institute, which aims at the development of a prototypical software tool, which exploits the benefits of semantic as well as XML technologies, for the integration and consolidation of design data. Both, ontology and software development is performed in close cooperation with partners from the chemical and software industries to ensure their compliance with the requirements of industrial practice.