Enterprise integration using the semantic unification meta-model

The most difficult problem involved in establishing the kind of communication needed to support enterprise integration is the semantic problem: how to determine when the communicating parties are talking about the same thing, when they are not, and when they are talking about something just enough different to be dangerous. The Semantic Unification Meta-Model (SUMM), which is based on the classical predicate calculus, attempts to provide a foundation for specifying the semantics of a language in a way that assures the ability to translate information from one language to another. The SUMM is not intended as a primary language for modeling domain knowledge. Rather it is intended to provide a technique for rigorously defining the truth conditions of any model stated in any language that meets certain non-exclusive conditions: that the information content of the modeling language is based on the meaning of a set of “predicates” that classify objects and relationships, and on the identification of individuals through the use of “terms”. The SUMM provides a meta-model for such languages that allows the expressions of each language to be mapped to a common ontology. Such a meta-model can be developed at the instance level to support multilingual communication about particular individuals, at the model level to support multilingual communication about types of individuals, or, at the meta-model level to support multilingual communication about types of models.