ISO/TS 18876 (all parts) establishes an architecture, a methodology and other specifications for integrating industrial data for exchange, access and sharing. Together these support the following activities:

• integrating data which may be:
  • from different sources or with different model contexts,
  • described by different models, or
  • defined in different modelling languages;
• sharing data among applications through systems integration architectures;
• resolving conflict between models developed with different objectives;
• translating data between different encodings;
• translating models between different modelling languages.

ISO/TS 18876-2:2003 specifies methods for the following:

• creating and extending integration models;
• evaluating and selecting an integration model that can integrate two or more application models;
• creating an application model that is a constrained subset of an integration model to support particular application domain requirements for exchange, sharing, or both;
• creating a mapping specification between an application model and an integration model.

The following are within the scope of ISO/TS 18876-2:2003:

• modelling language independent methods for creating and extending an integration model;
• methods for integrating an application model with an integration model;
• mapping language independent methods for mapping an application model to an integration model;
• criteria for the selecting modelling languages and mapping languages that can be used within the specified methods for integration and mapping.

The following are outside the scope of ISO/TS 18876-2:2003:

• the structure and content of particular integration models;
• methods for creating and extending particular integration models;
• methods for mapping application models to particular integration models.

NOTE The specific methods that apply to mappings between particular application models and integration models depend on the modelling paradigm(s) applied and on the structure and content of the models.