CIMOSA - News

Vol. 12/1,  date 2005-04-01
ISSN 1618-1646
 

Editor: Martin Zelm, Gehenbuehlstr. 18A, D-70499 Stuttgart, martin.zelm@cimosa.de


The CIMOSA - News is published by the CIMOSA Association. The CIMOSA News will report on CIMOSA applications, evolution of its technical specification, advancements in standardisation and related items. Contributions from other parties are welcome. The CIMOSA - News will be printed periodically and is also available in the internet at http://www.cimosa.de.


Contents

Three plenary sessions addressed various aspects of interoperability with the four keynote speakers on the need for future developments; eGovernment interoperability for regional governments; the OMG Model Driven Architecture; and the view of the European Commission on interoperability. Three invited papers presented contributions from the ATHENA project, the CEN/ISSS eBusiness Interoperability Forum and Microsoft. Focus of the ATHENA presentation was on Community Building and the Enterprise Interoperability Centre (EIC), a foreseen follow-on for the ATHENA project. Microsoft presented their view on Service-Oriented Architecture and how they could be employed in pan-European e-government services.

The papers presented in the general session addressed a wide range of subjects relevant for enterprise software and application interoperability including frameworks, architectures, meta-models, ontologies, infrastructures and tools. The R&D session with seven projects addressed: Semantic Web, cross-organisational collaboration, standardisation, research in interoperability, enterprise systems and integration and eGovernment. Industrial applications presented in the Industrial Track addressed topics of interoperability in the domains of architecture, frameworks and infrastructures. For abstracts of the papers visit ‘Reports from Events’ at www.cimosa.de. The Conference Proceedings will be published by Springer-Verlag during the second quarter 2005.(http://interop-esa05.unige.ch/)

Major INTEROP activities included 1) a General Assembly in Luxembourg on 2004-11-22/24 to consolidate the New Work Plan, 2) a successful project review with the European Commission on 2004-12-07/08 concluding with the acceptance of all deliverables and 3) the completion of the New Work Plan for the time period of month19-month 36, which is organized in a matrix organisation of work packages and work groups.

The IST FP6 project NO-REST (Networked Organisations - REsearch into STandards and Standardisation, IST 507626) held a workshop attended by 25 persons at CEN, Brussels, 2004-11-25. The project has been initiated by research institutes (Fraunhofer ISI, TNO, SINTEF), universities (Aachen, Delft, Edinburgh) and the European Standardisation Initiative ETSI. The objective is to investigate the applicability and dynamics of standards in the e-business and e-government sectors, and to develop guidelines for tools for the assessment of their performance and impact on networked organisations.

The project develops a framework for the assessment of the impact of ICT standards and a model to capture the dynamic behaviour of standards. NO-REST will develop, and apply, a methodology to assess, a-posteriori, the performance of standards. This will contribute to guidelines and tools to evaluate – a-priori – the impact a standard may have on the market. Further, empirical European field survey studies on the impact of standards and the challenges of standardisation have been started, as surveys (ETSI), case studies, (ETSI-GSM), and an IUT Delphi Survey. The considered domains of standards range from enterprise applications with a relative low standardisation effort to telecommunication with a relative high effort of standardisation and regulations. Fraunhofer, Germany has started an Initiative called Standards & Innovation, which plans to hold two workshops in Berlin in 2005. (www.no-rest.org)

CEN TC 310 WG 1 Modelling and Architectures meeting in Paris, 2004-12-13/15 was attended by 7 people from France, Germany and UK. The subject was to review the two standards CEN/ISO 19439 and 19440. Issues have been resolved and the modified documents have been circulated within the working group for further comments. The next meeting will be held at VDMA in Frankfurt as part of the ISO SC5/WG1 meting (see below)

ISO TC 184 SC5/WG1 Modelling and Architectures., VDMA, Frankfurt, 2005-04-21/23.

IEC/SC 65A-ISO/TC 184/SC 5/JWG 15, VDE Frankfurt, 2005-04-18/21.

Publication Reviews

Book Review

A. Dolgui et al, (Editors), Supply Chain Optimisation – Product/Process Design, Facility Location and Flow Control, the book is organised in three parts: modelling techniques, optimisation methods and decision aid tools. The 8 papers on Modelling techniques address a wide range of topics, from enterprise integration and modelling of human roles to forecasting and simulation and performance evaluation. With 7 papers covering Optimisation methods applications of optimisation like line balancing, two-way product flows; delivery and operation cost, and planning are presented. Different methods and tools are described in the 5 papers of the Decision aid tool part like discrete event simulation, process and resource planning and multi-agent based simulation. Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. Applied Optimization Series, Volume 94, ISBN 0387-23566-3, e-ISBN 0-387-23581-7. For short abstracts of all papers see www.cimosa.de.

Paper presented

K. Kosanke, ISO Standards for Interoperability: a comparison, presented at INTEROP-ESA’05, Geneva, 2005-02-23/25

CIMOSA Association

The CIMOSA Association (COA) is a non-profit organisation involved in promotion of Enterprise Engineering and Integration based on CIMOSA and its active support in national, European and international standardisation. COA members are industrial and research organisations.