Managing XML-based data integration for a time-distance project management / Nurhidayah Abd Aziz

In the context of the highway construction projects, various data were exchanged and shared to codify the knowledge and project management especially in planning and scheduling process. The inconsistency of format, different field values and schema layout had caused difficulties, data errors and unsupportive exchanged during the process of data and information sharing. This study proposed a binary integration approach based on three layer architecture. The target is to produce a flexible vehicle for data integration by producing an XML tool. The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a tool which can help provide the necessary flexibility by providing a common syntax for expressing the structure of data. The construction of XML documents warehouses from data of each partner allows to propose a solution to the problems of structural heterogeneity. A basic schema query is generated from the source document to create a global schema. A merger rules were used to ensure the object attribute in the task template were matched with the code description in the source schema and resolving conflict occurred. This global XML document provided the underlying support for the data sharing, publishing and application access among various systems. In this study, the data integration and exchanging platform were demonstrates in the environment of two major application in time-distanced-based construction project management which is Microsoft Project and TILOS Linear software.