Pluralism in system integration: intelligent LEIM

The pluralistic approach to integrating existing nonintegrated systems is discussed in connection with the Intelligent Loop Equipment Inventory Module (ILEIM) project. A pluralistic approach is used because it exploits the strengths of various forms of representation, supports alternative views of data, and allows the incremental addition of information to a system without forcing a global reorganization. All the components of the integrated system communicate through translation into the general format of Cyc, a knowledge representation language. The individual system modules retain their individual views, yet are able to communicate and cooperate with each other via a shared high-level language. The ILEIM application domain, some specifics on how ILEIM works, and a sample interaction with the tool are described