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Cooperation &
Interoperability
Architecture & Ontology
Definition

According to ISO/IEC 2382-01,
Information Technology Vocabulary,
Fundamental Terms, interoperability is
defined as follows: "The capability to
communicate, execute programs, or
transfer data among various functional
units in a manner that requires the user to
have little or no knowledge of the unique
characteristics of those units".
Importance
Increased move toward more distributed
computer systems through network
communication facilities.
 Need for standards in process and
protocols have increased as the need to
communicate between systems has
increased

Benefits
Seamless integration of modular products
robustly fulfilling focused software needs
 Lack of need to do ground-up design
everytime
 Allows for 3rd party component to be
integrated into systems

Downsides
Conformation to other system’s policies
even if there is a better way of operating
 Level of Interoperability can inhibit
intellectual property
 More time consuming during the design
process
 Potentially more cost to maintain

Examples
Java Virtual Machine
 Open Document Format
 Steam Client Integration in Games
 ARPA Net
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Difficulty of Implementation
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Semantic Issues
– A standard, protocol, or rule can be
interpreted by different parties in different
ways
Example: Different HTML implementations of
the W3C HTML 4.0 Specifications
Difficulty of Implementation

Interaction between systems is sometimes
under the guise of complete information.
– Unbounded System involve an unknown
number of participating systems.
Difficulty of Implementation

Trust
– Each system design must trust the other one
in order to fully work. If one system
perceives that the other one is untrustworthy,
the system may withhold levels of
interoperability
Difficulty of Implementation
Software cascading – adverse effects on
other components may have greater
consequences down the line, due to
greater interdependence between modular
components
 Software system boundaries are
sometimes more difficult to define

Security Concerns
Issues of Confidentiality
 Information Integrity

– information not corrupted due to
unauthorized—by error or intent—change

Information Availability
– What information will be available to other
systems
Architectures for Interoperability
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Component Object Model (COM)
– An object-oriented model developed by
Microsoft to facilitate interoperability
– Effective across different OS and languages
– Interoperable components must comply with
a predefined "binary" data access interface
beneath which there is no constraint on the
application implementation
Architectures for Interoperability

Distributed computing environment (DCE)
– The OSF (Open Software Foundation) DCE is
a comprehensive set of services supporting
the development, use and maintenance of
distributed applications. The services are
provided independently of operating systems
and network interfaces
Cost / Performance

Harder to achieve
– Requires more work to be within standards
Effective interoperability can be extremely
beneficial to software reuse and system
specialization
 Universal standards are the most common ways
to achieve Interoperability but not all software
providers adhere to standards
 Worthwhile overhead cost to maintain standards,

– More of a fixed overhead and not a variable cost as
more providers adopt