Software Engineering Institute

This technical note examines some of the complexities of interoperability and some recent research approaches to achieving it. There are many reasons why achieving interoperability between complex, heterogeneous systems is difficult. These include the problem of semantics; the differences between hardware and software; the difference between bounded and unbounded software systems; the need for trust, trustworthiness, and security in software systems; and the difficulty of quantifying interoperability. Many research efforts currently underway are aimed at finding improvements in both technologies and procedures to achieving interoperability more easily. These efforts include work in ontologies, service-oriented architectures, emergent methods, and new approaches to security. While these efforts show many signs of promise, a considerable amount of work will be needed to bring these to a mature state.