Application integration on the user interface level: An ontology-based approach

Integration of software applications can be achieved on different levels: the data level, the business logic level, and the user interface level. Integration on the user interface level means assembling the user interfaces of existing applications in a framework allowing seamless, unified interaction with those applications. While integration on the user interface level is desirable both from a software engineering as well as from a usability point of view, most current approaches require detailed knowledge of the integrated applications and make the implementation of a common interaction that involves different applications a difficult issue.In this paper, we propose a framework using ontologies for application integration on the user interface level by encapsulating the applications in plugins. Our approach is to use different ontologies for characterizing applications and the interactions possible with them, and for semantically annotating information objects exchanged between applications. Thus, the domain-independent and the domain-specific parts are untangled, which makes the framework applicable to different domains. An instance-based reasoner is used to process the ontologies and to compute the possible interactions, thus enabling integration at run-time.In an example from the domain of emergency management, we show how our approach helps implementing cross-application interactions more easily, thus significantly lowering the barriers for interoperability.