Pragmatic Interoperability Research Articles

Global agricultural concept space: lightweight semantics for pragmatic interoperability

Progress on research and innovation in food technology depends increasingly on the use of structured vocabularies—concept schemes, thesauri, and ontologies—for discovering and re-using a diversity of data sources. Here, we report on GACS Core, a concept scheme in the larger Global Agricultural Concept Space (GACS), which was formed by mapping between the most frequently used concepts of AGROVOC, CAB Thesaurus, and NAL Thesaurus and serves as a target for mapping near-equivalent concepts from other vocabularies. It provides globally unique identifiers, which can be used as keywords in bibliographic databases, tags for web content, for building lightweight facet schemes, and for annotating spreadsheets, databases, and image metadata using synonyms and variant labels in 25 languages. The minimal semantics of GACS allows terms defined with more precision in ontologies, or less precision in controlled vocabularies, to be linked together making it easier to discover and integrate semantically diverse data sources.

Towards pragmatic interoperability to support collaboration: A systematic review and mapping of the literature

Context: Many researchers have argued that providing interoperability support only considering the format and meaning (i.e. syntax and semantic) of data exchange is not enough to achieve complete, effective and meaningful collaboration. Pragmatic interoperability has been highlighted as a key requirement to enhance collaboration. However, fulfilling this requirement is not a trivial task and there is a lack of works discussing solutions to achieve this level of interoperability.Objectives: The aim of this study is to present a systematic review and mapping of the literature in order to identify, analyse and classify the published solutions to achieve pragmatic interoperability.Method: To conduct a systematic review and mapping in accordance with the guidelines proposed in the evidence-based software engineering literature.Results: Our study identified 13 papers reporting pragmatic interoperability computational solutions. The first paper in our set of selected papers was published in 2004; the main strategies used to address pragmatic interoperability issues were service discovery, composition and/or selection and ontologies. The application domain of the identified solutions was mainly e-business. In addition, most of the identified solutions were software architectures.Conclusion: Mature proposals addressing pragmatic interoperability are still rare in the literature. Although many works have discussed the importance of pragmatic interoperability, it is necessary that researchers report solutions that implement and evaluate pragmatic interoperability in order to make progress in this area.

Pragmatic PLM process interoperability for aeronautic, space and defence DMN

Today, in order to confront the growing complexity of products and organisations, Aeronautic, Space and Defence (ASD) manufacturing enterprises are using more and more System Engineering, Product Lifecycle Management and Computer Aided Solutions for various engineering and management activities. Combined with a more and more important outsourcing, such trends led to the emergence of what is called Dynamic Manufacturing Networks (DMN). These DMNs are facing important difficulties for the establishment of PLM interoperability based on legacy PLM standards for Manufactured Product and Process data exchange, sharing and long term archiving. To address such issues, Airbus Group Innovations (AGI) has been developing a Federative Interoperability Framework (FIF) through iterations between research, operational and standardisation projects. FIF defines interoperability principles, brakes and enablers. Based on an analysis of DMN interoperability brakes and enablers, this paper proposes a new way based on FIF interoperability principles for dealing with pragmatic interoperability of PLM processes within the ASD digital business ecosystem. We propose a DMN interoperability conceptual framework, coupled with an experimental collaborative open platform (cPlatform), to achieve pragmatic PLM process interoperability. For this, we rely on DMN blueprint of PLM Business Processes developed within the frame of the IMAGINE project. The proposed approach is then assessed according to scientific, business and standardisation viewpoints. Today, Aeronautic, Space and Defence manufacturing enterprises' products and organisations are more and more complex. It motivates usage of System Engineering, Product Life cycle Management (PLM) and computer aided solutions for engineering or management activities. Dynamic Manufacturing Networks (DMN) are then emerging, but facing important difficulties for the establishment of PLM interoper- ability based on legacy PLM standards for Manufactured Product and Process data exchange, sharing and long term archiving. Extending a Federative Interoperability Framework (FIF) developed by Airbus Group Innovations (AGI) through iterations between research, operational and standardisation projects.

Terminology in the Web (accessibility), via the Web (distribution) and through the Web (creation) – Considerations in conjunction with the development of the ISO/CDB (Concept DataBase)

Summary Terminology science and terminology work suffer from the relative lack of recognition of their importance, the relative sparseness of high-quality terminological resources, the labour-intensiveness (and therefore costliness) of preparing terminological data using conventional approaches, the lack of esteem for terminology work by domain experts, etc. Terminology in the sense of a representation of a set of closely related concepts is often considered to be an uninspiring subject. On the other hand, industry and research in content and knowledge management is gradually recognizing the importance of terminological methods and data. For industry, terminology – often called ontology – is important in conjunction with globalization, internationalization and localization, where it is crucial for communication (e.g. in trade, marketing, etc.), product data management, technical documentation, translation, and localization, not to say strategies in enterprise content management. Therefore, R&D increasingly concentrates on ontology studies and interoperability – aiming at true semantic interoperability in the sense of conceptual and pragmatic interoperability of structured content, which lately came to be called content interoperability, in order to differentiate it from the semantic interoperability of computer science and software engineering.

Why is clinical information not reused?

Reuse of clinical information plays a key role in the vision of a health sector with comprehensive semantic and pragmatic interoperability. Several papers have dealt with the secondary reuse of information, e.g. for statistics or research, while the primary reuse - clinical information reused in a clinical setting - has received less attention. On the basis of a qualitative literature review, this paper creates a categorised overview of the different causes to refrain from reuse of clinical information in clinical settings. The categorisation contributes to a greater understanding of failing reuse of clinical information in clinical settings, and it can probably be used in designing, evaluating and optimising clinical information systems. Further, it is speculated that the categorisation can be used in the process of identifying the concepts that constitute the context of clinical information.

Trust and Distrust in Adaptive Inter-enterprise Collaboration Management

The success and competitive edge of enterprises has become increasingly dependent on the enterprises' agility to become members in business networks that support their own business strategies. Therefore, integration solutions with their well-weathered strategic networks are no longer sufficient. Instead, there is need for more open business service ecosystems where previously unknown services and partnerships can be utilized. The ecosystem is to be supported with infrastructure services to solve the evident problems of semantic and pragmatic interoperability and collaboration-governing contract management. Furthermore, the ecosystem must support the creation of trust relationships with previously unknown partners, and reacting to encountered breaches of trust within collaborations. This paper proposes a trust management system where autonomous enterprises make automated, private trust decisions about their membership in each collaboration separately, while taking advantage of globally shared reputation of business peers in earlier collaborations. The trust decisions are adjustable to different and changing business situations.

Interoperability test generation: formal definitions and algorithm

In the context of network protocols, interoperability testing is used to verify that two (or more) implementations communicate correctly while providing the services described in their respective specifications. This study is aimed at providing a method for interoperability test generation based on formal definitions. Contrary to previous works, this study takes into account quiescence of implementations that may occur during interoperability testing. This is done through the notion of interoperability criteria that give formal definitions of the different existing pragmatic interoperability notions. It is first proved that quiescence management improves non-interoperability detection. Two of these interoperability criteria are proved equivalent leading to a new method for interoperability test generation. This method avoids the well-known state explosion problem that may occur when using existing classical approaches. Dans le contexte des protocoles réseaux, le test d'interopérabilité est utilisé pour vérifier si deux (ou plus) implémentations communiquent correctement tout en fournissant les services décrits dans les spécifications correspondantes. Le but de cet article est de fournir une méthode pour la génération de tests d'interopérabilité basée sur une définition formelle de la notion d'interopérabilité. Contrairement aux travaux précédents, cette étude prend en compte les blocages des implémentations qui peuvent être observés durant un test d'interopérabilité. Ceci est réalisé via la notion de critères d'interopérabilité, qui donnent des définitions formelles des notions d'interopérabilité existantes. Il est tout d'abord prouvé que la gestion des blocages améliore la détection de la non-interopérabilité. L'équivalence de deux des critères est aussi prouvée permettant l'introduction d'une nouvelle méthode de génération de tests d'interopérabilité. Cette méthode permet d'éviter le problème d'explosion combinatoire du nombre d'états que rencontrent les approches classiques.

Interoperability Middleware for Federated Business Services in Web-Pilarcos

Participation in electronic business networks has become necessary for the success of enter¬prises. The strategic business needs for participating in multiple networks simultaneously and for managing changes in these networks are re?ected as new requirements for the supporting computing facilities. The Web-Pilarcos architecture addresses the needs of managed collabo¬ration and interoperability of autonomous business services in an inter-organisational context. The Web-Pilarcos B2B middleware is designed for lowering the cost of collaboration estab¬lishment and to facilitate management and maintenance of electronic business networks. The approach is a federated one: All business services are developed independently and the B2B middleware services are used to ensure that technical, semantic and pragmatic interoperability is maintained in the business network. In the architecture and middleware functionality design, attention has been given to the dynamic aspects and evolution of the network. This article dis¬cusses the concepts provided for application and business network creators and the supporting middleware-level knowledge repositories for interoperability support.