A legacy ERP system integration framework based on ontology learning

Abstract

In the past decades, there are various legacy ERP systems that exist in different departments or sub-organizations within the enterprise. The majority of the legacy ERP systems are heterogeneous systems, that may be developed by different software companies under different development framework, which create a big challenge for organizations to develop and implement centralized and integrated management systems based on their existing legacy ERP systems to respond the dynamic business environment with agility. Ontologies are viewed as an effective technology to integrate different data from multiple heterogeneous sources, the ontology learning methods were proposed to achieve (semi-)automated construction of ontologies. This paper proposes a general framework for legacy ERP system integration based on ontology learning to tackle this challenge. Initially, the related literature is reviewed from the perspective of system integration and ontology learning, then an integration framework based on ontology learning is given, and the basic workflow and ontology learning process are analysed and illustrated.