OSMOS API
Construction projects necessitate the collaboration of diverse work teams and firms, often non-collocated, which offer their own skills, know-how and resources. However, at the same time, the collaborating companies have different business processes and tools. The integration among the partners of a construction project would not only be a time and cost consuming operation but also an unnecessary one, since the separate firms which come together for a specific project may never work together again. Consequently, the mode of operation in building and construction domain resembles the so-called Virtual Enterprise. The Virtual Enterprise or Virtual organisation concept refers to the cooperation and function of two or more companies, having complementary capabilities and resources, as a single entity for the needs of a project. After the termination of the project the participating companies may return to their original operations, without suffering the financial and structural consequences of business processes modifications. However, different actors coming from different organisations, used to working with heterogeneous data sources and formats, need a unified single interface and application for their communication. The OSMOS project has yielded a collection of Internet-based services and tools in order to fulfil the need for inter-enterprise information management in dynamic virtual environments. The OSMOS research group identified and described the basic processes taking place in a construction VE, including the inter-company interactions, the nature and semantics of the information being produced and exchanged. In addition, the research team studied the existing software applications, commonly used in the construction domain, in order to select the architecture technology, appropriate for heterogeneous applications. The results obtained from the design phase and after generalisation and abstraction, led to the OSMOS Conceptual Models and the OSMOS Application Programming Interface (API). An Application Programming Interface (API), is a set of commonly-used functions, routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications, facilitating the means that one piece of computer software communicates with another. The proposed models reflect the underlying modes of operation and business logic deployed within the context of a VE. The OSMOS API, namely the High Security Service, the Information Management Service, the Service Manager Service and the Message –based communication service, address the need for management of services and information held within a project.
