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r (inter-operate). While the term was initially defined for information technolo
gy or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange,[1] a more
broad definition takes into account social, political, and organizational factor
s that impact system to system performance.[2]Task of building coherent services
for users when the individual components are technically different and managed
by different organizations[3]
Contents [hide]
1 Syntactic interoperability
2 Semantic interoperability
3 Cross-domain interoperability
4 Interoperability and open standards
4.1 Open standards
4.2 Post Facto Interoperability
5 Telecommunications
6 Search
7 Software
8 Organizations Dedicated to Interoperability
9 Medical industry
10 eGovernment
11 Public safety
12 Forces
13 Achieving software interoperability
14 Interoperability as a question of power and market dominance
15 Railways
16 See also
17 References
18 External links
Syntactic interoperability[edit]
If two or more systems are capable of communicating and exchanging data, they ar
e exhibiting syntactic interoperability. Specified data formats, communication p
rotocols and the like are fundamental. XML or SQL standards are among the tools
of syntactic interoperability. This is also true for lower-level data formats, s
uch as ensuring alphabetical characters are stored in a same variation of ASCII
or a Unicode format (for English or international text) in all the communicating
systems.
Syntactical interoperability is a necessary condition for further interoperabili
ty.
Semantic interoperability[edit]
Main article: Semantic interoperability
Beyond the ability of two or more computer systems to exchange information, sema
ntic interoperability is the ability to automatically interpret the information
exchanged meaningfully and accurately in order to produce useful results as defi
ned 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 bee
n object of study by research prototypes such as S3DB.
Cross-domain interoperability[edit]
Main article: Cross-domain interoperability
Multiple social, organizational, political, legal entities working together for
a common interest and/or information exchange.[4]
Interoperability and open standards[edit]
Interoperability must be distinguished from open standards. Although the goal of
Even when the original vendor is genuinely interested in promoting a healthy com
petition (so that he may also benefit from the resulting innovative market), pos
t-facto interoperability may often be undesirable as many defects or quirks can
be directly traced back to the original implementation's technical limitations.
Although in an open process, anyone may identify and correct such limitations, a
nd the resulting cleaner specification may be used by all vendors, this is more
difficult post-facto, as customers already have valuable information and process
es encoded in the faulty but dominant product, and other vendors are forced to r
eplicate those faults and quirks even if they could design better solutions, for
the sake of preserving interoperability. Alternatively, it can be argued that e
ven open processes are subject to the weight of past implementations and imperfe
ct past designs, and that the power of the dominant vendor to unilaterally corre
ct or improve the system and impose the changes to all users facilitates innovat
ion.
Lack of an open standard can also become problematic for the customers, as in ca
se of the original vendor's inability to fix a certain problem that is an artifa
ct of technical limitations in the original product. The customer wants that fau
lt fixed, but the vendor has to maintain that faulty state, even across newer re
visions of the same product, because that behaviour is a de facto standard and m
any more customers would have to pay the price of any break in interoperability
caused by fixing the original problem and introducing new behaviour.
Telecommunications[edit]
In telecommunication, the term can be defined as:
The ability of systems, units or forces to provide services to and accept servic
es from other systems, units or forces and to use the services exchanged to enab
le them to operate effectively together.
The condition achieved among communications-electronics systems or items of comm
unications-electronics equipment when information or services can be exchanged d
irectly and satisfactorily between them and/or their users. The degree of intero
perability should be defined when referring to specific cases.[5][6]
In two-way radio, interoperability is composed of three dimensions:
compatible communications paths (compatible frequencies, equipment and signaling
),
radio system coverage or adequate signal strength, and;
scalable capacity.
Search[edit]
Search interoperability refers to the ability of two or more information collect
ions to be searched by a single query.
Specifically related to web-based search, the challenge of interoperability stem
s from the fact designers of web resources typically have little or no need to c
oncern themselves with exchanging information with other web resources. Federate
d Search technology, which does not place format requirements on the data owner,
has emerged as one solution to search interoperability challenges. In addition,
standards, such as OAI-PMH, RDF, and SPARQL, have emerged recently that also he
lp address the issue of search interoperability related to web resources. Such s
tandards also address broader topics of interoperability, such as allowing data
mining.
Software[edit]
Interoperability: playing the two role network game, when one of the player clie
nts (top left) runs under Sun Microsystems and another under GNU Classpath with
JamVM. The applications execute the same bytecode and interoperate using the sta
ndard RMI-IIOP messages for communication
With respect to software, the term interoperability is used to describe the capa
bility of different programs to exchange data via a common set of exchange forma
ts, to read and write the same file formats, and to use the same protocols. (The
ability to execute the same binary code on different processor platforms is 'no
t' contemplated by the definition of interoperability.) The lack of interoperabi
lity can be a consequence of a lack of attention to standardization during the d
esign of a program. Indeed, interoperability is not taken for granted in the non
-standards-based portion of the computing world.
According to ISO/IEC 2382-01, Information Technology Vocabulary, Fundamental Ter
ms, interoperability is defined as follows: "The capability to communicate, exec
ute programs, or transfer data among various functional units in a manner that r
equires the user to have little or no knowledge of the unique characteristics of
those units". [7]
Note that the definition is somewhat ambiguous because the user of a program can
be another program and, if the latter is a portion of the set of program that i
s required to be interoperable, it might well be that it does need to have knowl
edge of the characteristics of other units.
This definition focuses on the technical side of interoperability, while it has
also been pointed out that interoperability is often more of an organizational i
ssue: often interoperability has a significant impact on the organizations conce
rned, raising issues of ownership (do people want to share their data?), labor r
elations (are people prepared to undergo training?) and usability. In this conte
xt, a more apt definition is captured in the term "business process interoperabi
lity".
Interoperability can have important economic consequences; for example, research
has estimated the cost of inadequate interoperability in the U.S. capital facil
ities industry to be $15.8 billion a year.[8] If competitors' products are not i
nteroperable (due to causes such as patents, trade secrets or coordination failu
res), the result may well be monopoly or market failure. For this reason, it may
be prudent for user communities or governments to take steps to encourage inter
operability in various situations. In the United Kingdom, for example, there is
an eGovernment-based interoperability initiative called e-GIF while in the Unite
d States there is the NIEM initiative. Standards Defining Organizations (SDOs) p
rovide open public software specifications to facilitate interoperability; examp
les include the Oasis-Open organization and buildingSMART (formerly the Internat
ional Alliance for Interoperability). As far as user communities, Neutral Third
Party is creating standards for business process interoperability. Another examp
le of a neutral party is the RFC documents from the Internet Engineering Task Fo
rce (IETF).
The OSLC (Open Service for Lifecycle Collaboration) Community is working on find
ing a common standard in order that software tools can share and exchange data e
.g. bugs, tasks, requirements etc. The final goal is to agree on an open standar
d for interoperability of open source [Application Lifecycle Management|ALM] too
ls.[9]
Organizations Dedicated to Interoperability[edit]
Many organizations are dedicated to interoperability. All have in common that th
ey want to push the development of the World Wide Web towards the semantic web.[
dubious
discuss] Some concentrate on eGovernment, eBusiness or data exchange in
general. Internationally, Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium facilit
ates global interoperability across borders, language and technical barriers. In
Europe, for instance, the European Commission and its IDABC programme issue the
European Interoperability Framework. IDABC was succeeded by the ISA programme.
They also initiated the Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe (SEMIC.EU). A Eu
ropean Land Information Service (EULIS) was established in 2006, as a consortium
of European National Land Registers. The aim of the service is to establish a s
ingle portal through which customers are provided with access to information abo
ut individual properties, about land and property registration services, and abo
imited interoperable systems. These approaches were inadequate and, in the U.S.A
., the lack of interoperability in the public safety realm become evident during
the 9/11 attacks [15] on the Pentagon and World Trade Center structures. Furthe
r evidence of a lack of interoperability surfaced when agencies tackled the afte
rmath of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
In contrast to the overall national picture, some states, including Utah, have a
lready made great strides forward. The Utah Highway Patrol and other departments
in Utah have created a statewide data-sharing network using technology from a c
ompany based in Bountiful, Utah, FATPOT Technologies.
The Commonwealth of Virginia is one of the leading states in the United States w
hen it comes to improving interoperability and is continually recognized as a Na
tional Best Practice by Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Virginia's proven
practitioner-driven Governance Structure ensures that all the right players are
involved in decision making, training & exercises, planning efforts, etc. The I
nteroperability Coordinator leverages a regional structure to better allocate gr
ant funding around the Commonwealth so that all areas have an opportunity to imp
rove communications interoperability. Virginia's strategic plan for communicatio
ns is updated yearly to include new initiatives for the Commonwealth
all project
s and efforts are tied to this plan, which is aligned with the National Emergenc
y Communications Plan, authored by Department of Homeland Security's Office of E
mergency Communications (OEC).
The State of Washington seeks to enhance interoperability statewide. The State I
nteroperability Executive Committee (SIEC), established by the legislature in 20
03, works to assist emergency responder agencies (police, fire, sheriff, medical
, hazmat, etc.) at all levels of government (city, county, state, tribal, federa
l) to define interoperability for their local region.
Washington recognizes collaborating on system design and development for wireles
s radio systems enables emergency responder agencies to efficiently provide addi
tional services, increase interoperability, and reduce long-term costs.
This important work saves the lives of emergency personnel and the citizens they
serve.
The U.S. government is making a concerted effort to overcome the nation's lack o
f public safety interoperability. The Department of Homeland Security's Office f
or Interoperability and Compatibility (OIC) is pursuing the SAFECOM and CADIP pr
ograms, which are designed to help agencies as they integrate their CAD and othe
r IT systems.
The OIC launched CADIP in August 2007. This project will partner the OIC with ag
encies in several locations, including Silicon Valley. This program will use cas
e studies to identify the best practices and challenges associated with linking
CAD systems across jurisdictional boundaries. These lessons will create the tool
s and resources public safety agencies can use to build interoperable CAD system
s and communicate across local, state, and federal boundaries.
Forces[edit]
Force interoperability is defined in NATO as the ability of the forces of two or
more nations to train, exercise and operate effectively together in the executi
on of assigned missions and tasks. Additionally NATO defines interoperability mo
re generally as the ability to act together coherently, effectively and efficien
tly to achieve Allied tactical, operational and strategic objectives.[16]
At the strategic level, interoperability is an enabler for coalition building. I
t facilitates meaningful contributions by coalition partners. At this level, int
eroperability issues center on harmonizing the world views, strategies, doctrine
ems, the heart of corporate IT networks. Microsoft was ordered to disclose compl
ete and accurate interface documentation, which will enable rival vendors to com
pete on an equal footing ( the interoperability remedy ). As of June 2005 the Commis
sion is market testing a new proposal by Microsoft to do this, having rejected p
revious proposals as insufficient.
Interoperability has also surfaced in the Software patent debate in the European
Parliament (June/July 2005). Critics claim that because patents on techniques r
equired for interoperability are kept under RAND (reasonable and non discriminat
ory licensing) conditions, customers will have to pay license fees twice: once f
or the product and, in the appropriate case, once for the patent protected progr
amme the product uses.
Railways[edit]
Railways have greater or lesser interoperability depending on conforming to stan
dards of gauge, couplings, brakes, signalling, communications, loading gauge, st
ructure gauge, and operating rules, to mention a few parameters. For passenger r
ail service, different railway platform height and width clearance standards may
also cause interoperability problems.
North American freight railroads are highly interoperable, but systems in Europe
, Asia, Africa, Central and South America, and Australia are much less so. The p
arameter most difficult to overcome (at reasonable cost) is incompatibility of g
auge, though variable gauge axle systems such as the SUW 2000 are starting to be
used.