A service oriented architecture for data integration in asset management

The integration of data plays a crucial role in condition monitoring and active data warehousing. It is classified in horizontal and vertical integration which capture different integration scenarios. Horizontal scenarios deal with application providing complementary functionality, whereas vertical scenarios deal with the integration of applications on different abstraction levels. Processing data for effective decision support in condition monitoring is usually performed by different software applications that are integrated in a common business process. In order to execute the business process, data must be exported from one application and imported into another. However, due to heterogeneous underlying data models, the data export and import is not straight forward and a translation of data from one representation into another is required. We propose a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based on Web services that allow a seamless integration of asset management tools by providing a common architecture. It supports vertical and horizontal integration and enables the plug-in of new tools without interfering with a running environment.