A generic framework to achieve complex data exchange in an industrial environment

In today's competitive environment, efficient data exchange in a heterogeneous environment is an issue that needs to be addressed. In general, there are a great variety of computer systems that make the linking of computers to enable electronic data interchange even more difficult and costly. To make things even more complicated, complex data such as multimedia clips are likely to be included in the data interchange process, causing extra overhead to the data communication networking system. To overcome this problem, a system that enables the sharing of data, even complex data, among various computer systems, whether within or outside the company, is needed. In this paper, a generic framework for achieving information exchange among business objects residing in dissimilar computer systems is presented. This framework is designed with reference to the software bus communication analogy, incorporating the deployment of an object database system, which may handle the storage and retrieval of complex data such as video, animation and audio clips. The significance of this research can be realised when dealing with the problem of complex data interchange among computer systems in an industrial environment. In order to show the usability of Object Communication Bus Network (OCBN), a case study is outlined in the paper with results in favour of the proposed approach.