Toward a semantic approach to improve data exchange in an industrial information system

Our research takes place inside a large public transport company, made up of a main group and about fifty subsidiary companies. In this paper, we discuss the problems associated with the interoperability and information exchange between the company´s repositories. Within this context, a prototype system for the automatic detection and propagation of data modifications within the applications and projects repositories is presented. Our goal is to propose a new model for information exchange inside the enterprise. By focusing on data ambiguity, we propose a solution for interoperability by using constraints to solve those ambiguities. This is a first step toward a semantic approach, improving data exchanges by understanding the meaning of the information.