TASIS: A typology of architectural strategies for interoperability in software-intensive systems

Abstract

Complex and large software-intensive systems are increasingly present in several application domains, including Industry 4.0, connected health, smart cities, and smart agriculture, to mention a few. These systems are commonly composed of diverse other systems often developed by different organizations using various technologies and, as a consequence, interoperability among these systems becomes difficult. Many architectural strategies for interoperability have already been proposed; however, selecting adequate strategies is challenging. Additionally, it lacks an overview of such strategies. This work presents TASIS, a typology of architectural strategies for the interoperability of software-intensive systems. We also validated it with 33 practitioners from different countries with an extensive experience in integration projects. This work also offers 12 industry-based association rules that suggest how to combine those strategies to mitigate issues at different interoperability levels. As a result, our typology can serve as a starting point to further aggregate new strategies and, ultimately, supports software architects in designing interoperability-driven architectural solutions.