Semantic Web And Peer-To-Peer: Integration And Interoperability In Industry

Companies need integrated information systems to react to requirements of their customers, collaborate with partners, identify and exploit new opportunities quickly and effectively. A need for solid technology that will provide effective Knowledge Management within and across industrial enterprises is crucial. Nowadays a new integration concept based on Semantic Web is being developed, which pretends to address the industrial challenges concerning integration and interoperability. The concept assumes semantic annotation of Web resources and services to make them “understandable” by computers. On the other hand, emerging Peer-to-Peer technology and appropriate networks suite well to the increasingly decentralized nature of modern companies and their industrial and business processes, whether it is a single enterprise or a group of companies. In this paper a potential of combination of Semantic Web and Peer-to-Peer is analyzed in context of integration and interoperability of industry enterprises. To distinguish a target a brief analysis of an industrial information infrastructure is made. A survey of existent solutions is made that gain benefits from Semantic Web and Peer-to-Peer to provide evidence in favour of these two technologies combination. The real industrial case of the global network of maintenance services is described that implements the above concepts within the OntoServ.Net project.