Semantic requirements on information integration for diagnostic maturation

The diagnostic maturation process requires those who support complex systems to have ready access to design, maintenance, and other logistic support information sources. The heterogeneous nature of these sources poses unique challenges to those who would extract meaningful knowledge from them. There have been numerous Information Integration efforts over the last ten or so years, with varying degrees of success. There have been data exchange standards created for product data that concern primarily the design and manufacturing aspects of the product life cycle. Finally, there are information-based standards in the diagnostic design and implementation phases that utilize formalisms for representing the semantics of the data and knowledge over which they operate. This paper will look at each of these aspects of the Information Integration challenge and examine them for their relevance to the issues inherent in the collection and integration of information that supports diagnostic maturation.