Design of a Meta Model for integrating enterprise systems

In the rapidly changing environment of the knowledge economy, an enterprise must respond to potential future changes when developing and implementing enterprise systems, which must be thus flexible and integrateable. The paper presents a method for integrating distributed Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) with the backend of enterprise systems developed by various software vendors. This method, with a Meta Model as the core integration technology, will enable enterprise systems to meet the demands of system integration, and to achieve, based on XML document standards, information integration. The method of integration is sufficiently flexible and expandable to integrate existing enterprises systems as well as systems that may be introduced into enterprises in the future. The study, which takes an on-line purchase system for electronic commerce as an example of the use of the proposed Meta Model, addresses the integration of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to achieve enterprise resources sharing, shorten purchase time and lower operation cost.