Database Integrations in Distributed Enterprise Information Systems: A Database Model with Imprecise Information and Query Processing

To increase product competitiveness, today’s manufacturing enterprises have to deliver their products at reduced cost and high quality in a short time. The change from sellers’ market to buyers’ market results in a steady decrease in the product life cycle time and the demands for tailor made and small-batch products. All these changes require that manufacturing enterprises quickly respond to market changes. Traditional production patterns and manufacturing technologies may find it difficult to satisfy the requirements of current product development. Many types of advanced manufacturing techniques, such as Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Agile Manufacturing, Concurrent Engineering, and Virtual Enterprise based on global manufacturing have been proposed to meet these requirements. One of the foundational supporting strategies is the computer-based information technology. Information systems have become the nerve center of current manufacturing systems. It should be noted that, for various organizational and technological reasons, multiple information systems used in information-based manufacturing enterprises are independently developed, locally administered, and different in logical or physical design [10, 24]. Therefore, a fundamental challenge in heterogeneous and distributed enterprise information management is the sharing of information for enterprise users across organizational boundaries [20].