Architecture of interoperable information systems

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Architecture of interoperable information systems

The architecture of interoperable information systems (AIOS) is a reference architecture for the development of interoperable information systems . If companies or public administrations want to implement cross-organizational business processes, the IT systems of the organization must be able to work together; in other words: the information systems must be interoperable . The AIOS serves as a blueprint that enables organizations to systematically develop interoperable information systems.

In AIOS, established principles from business informatics and interoperability research are combined, in particular from service-oriented architecture and collaborative business process management . AIOS was first described in a scientific paper and specifies the various levels, views and technical artifacts that are required to create interoperable information systems, regardless of the product or manufacturer. With its focus on cross-organizational business processes, the AIOS can be seen as a complementary addition to ARIS , an architecture for mapping internal IT systems and business processes.

Definitions

Just like the automation of internal processes, the automation of cross-organizational processes is one of the most important goals of the digital age. The cooperating organizations strive for a loose coupling of their information systems, but not for close integration ; the information systems involved should be able to work together, while at the same time they should retain as much independence as possible. This property is also called interoperability , or, in the context of collaborating organizations, business interoperability .

Information systems are systems that process information, i. H. they are used to record, process and output information. In business informatics, the term information system usually includes not only the hardware and software of a company, but also the associated human actors, business functions, processes and organizational structures. This understanding is also represented by the Zachman Framework , for example.

Architecture is defined as “the basic organization of a system, its components, their relationships to one another and to the environment, as well as the principles for its construction and evolution”. Sinz defines an information system architecture as a construction plan of an information system, in the sense of a specification and documentation of the components and their relationships, which contains all relevant views and construction rules for the creation of the development plan.

Accordingly, the architecture of interoperable information systems can be defined as the blueprint of a cross-organizational information system that enables companies to carry out business processes with one another.

Background and application

The architecture of interoperable information systems was published in 2010 as a reference for the creation of loosely coupled, interoperable information systems, using a model-based approach to the systematic development of collaborative business processes. The AIOS aims primarily at interoperability between large companies and describes how their internal information system elements can be systematically linked with the information systems of partner organizations.

The work is to be seen in the context of various research projects in the range of topics interoperability that preceded it.

The most important elements of the AIOS are:

  • Description of the elements of interoperable information systems and their relationships. The static part of the architecture or its structure is described here. In particular, it describes which information system elements companies have to communicate to their cooperation partners and how these public elements can be optimally correlated with internal, private elements; Examples of such information system elements are technical functions and services, message formats, interaction sequences and participating roles.
  • Description of possible development paths for the creation or adaptation of interoperable IT systems. This is also known as the dynamic part of the architecture. It describes the procedure or the method with which companies can gradually develop the elements of the static architecture.
  • Concept for the technical components required to implement the architecture, for example design tools and repositories for private and shared information system elements.

The last-mentioned point also describes a concept for the implementation of a "BII repository" in which an organization can publish its Business Interoperability Interface (BII) to cooperation partners. A view of information system elements that are to be published within the collaboration is implemented. In the BII repository, the processes, services, roles and message types relevant for the partners are described on various levels of technical granularity, so that partner organizations can search for both professionally and technically described artifacts, for example. In contrast to the conventional SOA approach with a central repository, different partner-specific repositories are implemented here.

structure

The static part of the architecture is based on three orthogonal dimensions: company views, degree of technical granularity and collaborative views.

Collaborative Views

The concept known from databases of making certain data areas visible with the help of views is also used for business processes and workflows to make certain parts of the process visible or invisible. In generalizing this concept, the AIOS differentiates between three views of information systems:

  1. The private view comprises information system elements that are only allowed to be visible within an organization.
  2. The public view comprises the elements of an internal information system that are to be visible to partner organizations within a cooperation (and which may be contained in the business interoperability interface of the publishing organization). The view thus represents the interface between internal and external systems; it serves as protection for internal systems and as a logical decoupling between cooperation business and internal processes.
  3. The global view is used to link the public views of different systems and to ensure a common or, within the cooperation, a “global” understanding of shared information system elements.

Corporate views

Illustration of the Architecture of Interoperable Information Systems / Enterprise Dimensions

In order to describe business processes comprehensively, this dimension contains four views:

  1. In the data view , relevant document types are defined for collaboration and their relationship to internal document types.
  2. In the organizational perspective , a common understanding of the roles relevant in the collaboration is ensured. For example, roles and departments that are visible to the partner company are described and their mapping to roles that are only used within the company.
  3. Individual business functions that are part of the cooperation are described in the function view.
  4. In the process view , the processes that an organization offers to partner organizations are described; the relationship between these published process interfaces and internal processes is also described here.

In combination with the collaborative views, private, public and global views of data, functions, processes and roles that are correlated with the company views are enabled.

Levels of technical granularity

AIOS levels of technical detail

Cross-company information systems should also be described at different levels of technical granularity: from the functional, through technical, to the execution or code level. On the one hand, this supports the systematic construction of interoperable information systems, and on the other hand, a holistic picture of existing systems can be communicated to partners so that the systems involved can be coordinated both professionally and technically. Similar to ARIS and OMG's model-driven architecture , three levels are used in AIOS for this purpose:

  1. Technical level : Here the information systems are described on a technology-independent level. In MDA terminology, this level is also referred to as the CIM level (Computational-Independent). For example, the business functions and business processes involved in the collaboration can be defined here with EPC .
  2. Technical level : The data processing concept of the information systems is described here. To this end, the models from the first level are technically enhanced and, if necessary, restructured; For example, instead of business functions, components or services (in the sense of SOA ) are described that technically map the functions. Further examples for this level are descriptions of data structures with UML class diagrams or process descriptions with BPMN .
  3. Implementation level : While the first two levels primarily serve the coordination between human actors or the generation of artifacts of the execution level, the artifacts of the third level are geared towards machine interpretability. The artifacts created here can then be used at runtime when executing cross-organizational processes. These are, for example, WSDL descriptions of internal or external services, XSD descriptions of the exchanged data types or BPEL descriptions of the processes involved.

credentials

  1. ↑ Jörg Ziemann: Architecture of Interoperable Information Systems - An enterprise Model-based Approach for Describing and Enacting Collaborative Business Processes. Logos, 2010. A summary can be found under J. Ziemann: Architecture of Interoperable Information Systems - Reference Architecture for Collaborations between Public Administrations. In: H. Krallmann, A. Zapp (ed.): Building blocks of a networked administration. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-503-13878-4 , p. 165.
  2. ↑ Jörg Becker, Reinhard Schütte: Retail Information Systems - Domain-Oriented Introduction to Business Informatics. 2nd Edition. Redline Wirtschaft, Frankfurt 2004, ISBN 3-478-25590-2 , p. 33.
  3. ^ Roland Gabriel: Information system. In: Encyclopedia of Information Systems. Online lexicon. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2008.
  4. ↑ IEEE: IEEE Std 1471 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). ( Memento of August 28, 2011 in the archive.today web archive ) Version 5.0, July 19, 2007, accessed: May 2009.
  5. ^ EJ Sinz: Architecture of information systems. In: P. Rechenberg, G. Pomberger (Ed.): Informatik-Handbuch. 3. Edition. Hanser, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-446-21842-4 , pp. 1055-1068.
  6. ↑ Interop NOE (2004 to 2007 project number IST- 2004-508011), ATHENA (2004 to 2007, project number IST- 2004-507849), R4eGov (2006 to 2009, project number IST- 2004-026650)