International Interoperability Research Articles

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Reports: Germany and Austria's Migration Project ‘Moving to MARC 21’

With the aim of improving international bibliographic interoperability, in 2004 Germany and Austria initiated a migration from the German data exchange format Maschinelles Austauschformat für Bibliotheken (MAB2) to the Anglo-American format MARC 21. The article outlines the main elements of the project ‘Moving to MARC 21’: a mapping of the data exchange formats MAB2 and MARC 21 to one another to ascertain gaps between the formats, the design of an editorial support system for the translation of MARC 21, and professional information sessions introducing the new format to the library community. Elements from MAB2 considered to be indispensable for exchange were either introduced to the format through Machine-Readable Bibliographic Information committee (MARBI) proposals or where they would not need Germany-wide application, defined in local fields. The project came to completion in June 2009 and has laid the foundation for international data exchange by assimilating processes and eliminating the need for intensive conversion work in Germany and Austria. An incidental but significant aspect of the project was the productive combined efforts of German and Austrian professionals and their Anglo-American partners in successfully overcoming differences in language and bibliographic transport and processing traditions through cooperative problem-solving.

RESTful implementation of geospatial services for Earth and Space Science applications

In the recent years, Representational State Transfer (REST) has been proposed as the architectural style for the World Wide Web. REST promises of scalability and simple deployment of Web Services seem to be particularly appealing for Earth and Space Science (ESS) applications. In fact, most of the available solutions for geospatial data sharing, applying standard interoperability specifications, require complex service-oriented infrastructures; these are powerful and extensible environments, but they usually result in difficult to deploy and manage for ESS research teams. Thus, ESS researchers would gain great benefit from an easy way of sharing geo-information using the international interoperability standards. The variety and complexity of geo-information sharing services poses several architectural issues; in fact these services encompass sensor planning and observation, coverages and features publication and retrieving, models and simulations running, data citation and annotation. Consequently, the adoption of a specific architectural style must be carefully evaluated against these specific requirements. In this work we analyse the existing geospatial services from an architectural perspective and investigate their possible RESTful implementation. Particular attention is paid to the OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS). Possible benefits and drawbacks, along with open issues and possible solutions are discussed. Our investigation suggests that REST may fit well to the typical ESS research usage cases. However, the architectural choice (e.g. Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) vs REST) will depend on a case-by-case analysis. Other important factors must be considered, such as the application context: a valuable example in point are the e-Business and e-Government application scenarios which require message based solutions – like those implemented by SOAP. In any case, there is a clear need for harmonization and reconciliation of these two approaches.

GEOSS Architecture Principles and the GEOSS Clearinghouse

The global earth observation system of systems (GEOSS) is composed of diverse component systems contributed by members and participating organizations of the group on earth observations (GEO). To enable these diverse components to interoperate, the GEOSS architecture embodies principles given in the GEOSS 10-year implementation plan and reference document. A basic principle is adoption of international standards and common interoperability arrangements, as seen in the contributed facility known as GEOSS Clearinghouse. GEOSS Clearinghouse acts as a cross-cutting discovery tool, encompassing all registered GEOSS components and external catalogs as well. Together, the GEOSS architecture and GEOSS clearinghouse enable GEO members and participating organizations to cooperate in realizing GEOSS. The resulting system of systems is simplifying access to resources for any and all users, including decision makers across the GEO societal benefit areas. This paper explains key GEOSS architecture principles and how GEOSS clearinghouse applies international standards and interoperability arrangements.

National, regional and international interoperability of Croatian healthcare information system

National, regional and international interoperability of Croatian healthcare information system

The Design of Metadata Interchange for Chinese Information and Implementation of Metadata Management System

With the development of Internet, digital libraries/museums have received worldwide attention and many developed countries are doing extensive researches on digital libraries/museums. In Taiwan, many institutions have digitized their collections. In addition, major research projects such as Digital Museum Project, Digital Archive Program, Digital Local Document Program, and CMNet are either in progress or about to begin. To digitize resources and present them on the WWW is the first priority; nevertheless, it is more important to organize these resources based on their characteristics, so users may retrieve and use them effectively. In digital library/museum systems, metadata plays a crucial role: its formulation has to begin with understanding the user demands and object characteristics, and standardization is essential for * The work is partially supported by National Science Council under grant NSC 89-2750-P-002-012.

The CHIN experience: Interoperability

The paper draws on Paul Miller's framework (technical, semantic, political/human, intercommunity, legal and international interoperability) to examine CHIN as an organization that strives toward interoperability as part of its core mandate. Based on the CHIN experience, it is argued that any attempt to advance the concept of interoperability must include consensus and compatibility, aggregation, integration and interface‐ability as concepts.

The international directory network and catalog interoperability

The international directory network and catalog interoperability

The DoD internet architecture model

This paper outlines the principles on which the U.S. Department of Defense packet internet architecture is based and characterizes some of the protocols which implement the architecture. Major factors which influenced the development of this architectural model include experimental and operational experience with a large number of interconnected packet networks, assessments and evaluations of military requirements for national and international interoperability and multiple jurisdiction operation, and specific concerns regarding security, survivability and operation under crisis conditions.