Interoperability

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The term interoperability (from the Latin opus 'work' and inter 'between') has two different but identical definitions:

  1. Interoperability is the ability to collaborate between different systems , technologies or organizations . This usually requires compliance with common standards . If two systems are compatible with each other, they are also called compatible .
  2. Interoperability is the ability of independent, heterogeneous systems to work together as seamlessly as possible in order to exchange information in an efficient and usable way or to make it available to the user without the need for separate agreements between the systems.

Interoperability is considered very important in many areas, including information technology and telecommunications and medical technology. But interoperability also plays a key role in transport and traffic systems, military systems, industrial automation technology and e-government .

Interoperability can have important consequences, especially in the economy, since monopoly positions can be achieved or expanded through patents , trade secrets or errors in coordination . It can therefore be beneficial for governments to support and promote interoperability. A distinction is often made between different forms of interoperability. For example, between semantic and conceptual interoperability.

In connection with software , one speaks of syntactic interoperability especially when several programs use the same file format ; in connection with distributed systems , if all system components use the same data formats (e.g. XML or JSON ) and the same communication protocol (e.g. TCP , HTTP or SOAP ).

The English word interoperability is often abbreviated as I14Y in software development . The 14 is the number of letters left out. (Similarly, I18N stands for internationalization .)

Clarification of the term for IT systems

As the interoperability of two or more IT systems increases, the effort required to ensure that the systems in question interact appropriately is reduced. The time required for this could be used to quantify the interoperability of two systems. However, this approach is impractical, so that usually only four levels of interoperability can be distinguished:

structural interoperability (connectivity)
Describes the ability to transfer user data from one system to another.
syntactic interoperability
Describes the ability to identify individual (semantically assessable) information units and data structures in the transmitted user data and to extract them for the purpose of further processing.
semantic interoperability
Describes the ability to interpret the extracted information units semantically correct.
organizational interoperability
Describes the ability to organize interacting processes effectively and efficiently.

Sometimes the lowest level is referred to as technical interoperability. However, technical requirements exist on all four levels.

See also

Web links

Wiktionary: Interoperability  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Wunder, Jürgen Grosche: Distributed Management Information Systems. Springer Science & Business Media, November 2009
  2. ↑ David Gregorczyk: Technologies for an interoperable and automated networking of medical IT systems , dissertation, 2014
  3. ↑ Alexander Sinsel: Smart Manufacturing. In: The Internet of Things in Production. Springer Vieweg, Berlin, Heidelberg, November 2019
  4. ↑ Hans van der Veer, Anthony Wiles: Achieving Technical Interoperability - the ETSI Approach . ETSI , April 2008. Retrieved October 28, 2019.