A framework that uses repositories for information systems and knowledge integration

Recent market conditions have forced companies to change their policies regarding systems development. Open architectures and distributed paradigms become first role players in the implementation of flexible, componentised systems that can easily adjust to changing requirements. However, there is a significant obstacle put across by the legacy, which still performs the main volume of business processes and stores the majority of the Enterprise Knowledge. Hence, a problem occurs regarding how we obtain integration of systems and knowledge when the legacy still dominates in the enterprise environment. In this paper we advocate that knowledge repositories may provide a solution by becoming the key components of distributed environments. Repositories support strong mechanisms for meta-level information management and systems specification. We present how a repository manages to integrate enterprise knowledge and IS at a conceptual level. Subsequently, we analyse the way a repository-based framework integrates knowledge and software components at a functional level. The analysis is based on the DELOS environment. An example practically exhibits the results achieved.