A CONCEPTUAL-APPROACH FOR AN ARCHITECTURE OF DISTRIBUTED OBJECTS FOR THE INTEGRATION OF HETEROGENEOUS DATA-PROCESSING SYSTEMS IN MANUFACTURING COMPANIES

A new integration concept for heterogeneous legacy systems is develope d. The concept consists of a model (business object model), an impleme ntation of business objects (Internet or Java/CORBA) and an informatio n structure (structure of the graphical user interface). The architect ure separates the dialog level from a logical application level, the b usiness objects. Legacy systems should be integrated into a company-wi de IT (Information Technology) architecture. This can be done through the encapsulation of these systems into several business objects. The IT implementation of the encapsulation will be implemented on the one hand using internet standards, and on the other hand using Java and CO RBA. Information transparency for all users in a corporate and user-fr iendly way is developed and described in an information structure. Wit hin the information structure the software engineer creates new applic ations using business objects as well as encapsulated legacy systems a nd applications. These legacy systems are integrated in the new archit ecture of distributed objects, and will be re-used, encapsulated and t ransformed into an object-oriented architecture.