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Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system, whose interfaces are completely understood, to work with other products or systems, at present or in the future, in either implementation or access, without any restrictions.[1]
While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange,[2] a broader definition takes into account social, political, and organizational factors that impact system to system performance.[3] Hence interoperability involves the task of building coherent services for users when the individual components are technically different and managed by different organizations.[4]
Types
If two or more systems use a common data formats and [1]
While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange,[2] a broader definition takes into account social, political, and organizational factors that impact system to system performance.[3] Hence interoperability involves the task of building coherent services for users when the individual components are technically different and managed by different organizations.[4]
Contents
- 1 Types
- 2 Interop
While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange,[2] a broader definition takes into account social, political, and organizational factors that impact system to system performance.[3] Hence interoperability involves the task of building coherent services for users when the individual components are technically different and managed by different organizations.[4]
If two or more systems use a common data formats and communication protocols and are capable of communicating with each other, they exhibit syntactic interoperability. XML and SQL are examples of common data formats and protocols. Lower-level data formats also contribute to syntactic interoperability, ensuring that alphabetical characters are stored in the same ASCII or a Unicode format in all the communicating systems.
Beyond the ability of two or more computer systems to exchange information, semantic interoperability is the ability to automatically interpret the information exchanged meaningfully and accurately in order to produce useful results as defined by the end users of both systems. To achieve semantic interoperability, both sides must refer to a common information exchange reference model. The content of the information exchange requests are unambiguously defined: what is sent is the same as what is understood. The possibility of promoting this result by user-driven convergence of disparate interpretations of the same information has been the object of study by research prototypes such as S3DB.
Cross-domain interoperability involves multiple social, organizational, political, legal entities working together for a common interest and/or information exchange.[5]
Interoperability and open standards
Interoperability imply Open standards ab-initio, i.e. by definition. Interoperability implies exchanges between a range of products, or similar products from several different vendors, or even between past and future revisions of the same product. Interoperability may be developed post-facto, as a special measure between two products, while excluding the rest, by using Open standards. When a vendor is forced to adapt its system to a dominant system that is not based on Open standards, it is not interoperability but only compatibility.
Open standards
Open standards rely on a broadly consultative and inclusive group including representatives from vendors, academics and others holding a stake in the development that discusses and debates the technical and economic merits, demerits and feasibility of a proposed common protocol. After the doubts and reservations of all members are addressed, the resulting common document is endorsed as a common standard. This document is subsequently released to the public, and henceforth becomes an open standard. It is usually published and is available freely or at a nominal cost to any and all comers, with no further encumbrances. Various vendors and individuals (even those who were not part of the original group) can use the standards document to make products that implement the common protocol defined in the standard and are thus interoperable by design, with no specific liability or advantage for any customer for choosing one product over another on the basis of standardized features. The vendors' products compete on the quality of their implementation, user interface, ease of use, performance, price, and a host of other factors, while keeping the customer's data intact and transferable even if he chooses to switch to another competing product for business reasons.
Post facto interoperability
MainOpen standards rely on a broadly consultative and inclusive group including representatives from vendors, academics and others holding a stake in the development that discusses and debates the technical and economic merits, demerits and feasibility of a proposed common protocol. After the doubts and reservations of all members are addressed, the resulting common document is endorsed as a common standard. This document is subsequently released to the public, and henceforth becomes an open standard. It is usually published and is available freely or at a nominal cost to any and all comers, with no further encumbrances. Various vendors and individuals (even those who were not part of the original group) can use the standards document to make products that implement the common protocol defined in the standard and are thus interoperable by design, with no specific liability or advantage for any customer for choosing one product over another on the basis of standardized features. The vendors' products compete on the quality of their implementation, user interface, ease of use, performance, price, and a host of other factors, while keeping the customer's data intact and transferable even if he chooses to switch to another competing product for business reasons.
Post facto interoperability
