Modelling Heterogeneous CIM Interfaces with ODP

Industrial office application systems represent a typical example ofthe problems encountered when building distributed applications wirh heterogeneous systems. In this context we introduce a concept tor an integrating infrastructurefor Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) based on the reference modelfor Open Pistributed Processing (ODP). This paper discusses the matching of interfaces between interoperating applications. This is realized by the extensive use of the ODP-Trader.In order to manage heterogeneousinterfaces it is necessary to study the type manager ofthe Trader. We propose a Heterogeneous Type Manager (HTM) in order to support open CIM structures. The basic idea of this HTM is the creation of a transformation function based on the theory of abstract data types. A ~ interface is considered as an algebrawhich is mappedonto its correspondingsignature.The type manager performs this mappingtor both the importer and exporter interfaces and tries to find a relation between both signatures. The result of the type manager analysis is a transformation function which enables a mapping from the importer to the exporter interface