Coordination system modelling

We describe an approach to the coordination of application systems through the modelling and maintenance of inter-system dependencies based on application data. These dependencies are specified by a Coordination Model which comprises a Coordination Interface for each application system and a global Coordination View. A Coordination Interface describes local object types relevant for system-wide coordination. The Coordination View describes the component systems, their globally important object types and the relationships between those object types: Further, it specifies the actions to be taken to ensure global consistency thereby providing system coordination. Specifically, we describe how this approach has been used for a Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) system which is based on the coordination of CIM component systems. In this CIM system, the Coordination Model is specified using the NIAM data model.