Why ISO15926 is the best

Editor's Notes

• #4: 5.4.2 Integrated approachIn the integrated approach a common form shall be used to represent the exchanged entities. This common form shall be sufficiently expressive to capture those details that affect interoperability of the items to be exchanged, rather than the process or system as a whole. The common form is not necessarily an International Standard, but needs to be agreed by participating enterprises in order to elaborate these entities and build systems accordingly.EXAMPLE Examples of developing interoperability using an integrated approach are ISO 10303, ISO 19440 and OASIS/UNCEFACT ebXMLThe integrated approach assures consistency and coherence of the interoperating subsystems by focusing on the components that need to interact. These components are then designed and implemented using a common form (or standard) so that interoperability is seen as a designed-in quality. Interoperation between these various components is therefore obtained a priori without any interfacing effort. Subsystems that are integrated in this way have distinct and individual structure, behaviour, or boundaries, but their combined behaviour is perceived to be as one entity and is achieved by collaboration and coordination through the use of the common form.5.4.3 Unified approachIn the unified approach, a common meta-model, which is applicable for the participating entities and used as a common reference to map existing models’ syntax and semantics, shall be identified and detailed. This meta-model provides at least a reference vocabulary, but could be a complete ontology. Such a meta-model is not an executable entity. Instead, it s hall provide a means for semantic equivalence to enable mapping between entities. Using this meta-model, a translation between the constituent entities is then possible. However, that translation might involve the loss of some informati on because the participating entities can have different extensions or instantiations of the same meta-model.NOTE 1 The unified approach is particularly suitable when developing interoperability for collaborative or networkedenterprises. To be interoperable with networked business partners, a new company maps its own model or system to the neutral meta-model without the necessity to make changes on its own model or system. This approach has an advantage over the integrated approach because of the reduced efforts, time and cost in implementation. It is also suitable for a situation where a large company needs to interoperate with SMEs. Normally an SME works with more than one large company; to interoperate with different companies, the unified approach can be a suitable solution in that it facilitates coordination without requiring conformance to potentially conflicting processes or environments.NOTE 2 In the re-engineering situation, syntactic alignment can be achieved through a unified approach that uses a mapping function to create missing elements of the exchange items, but semantic alignment between partners can be very difficult. Therefore, re-engineering is more applicable to developing intra-enterprise interoperability.5.4.4 Federated approachIn the federated approach, there is no sufficiently capable common form or meta-model to guide the interaction between enterprises that need to interoperate . The lack of capability is often related to different terminologies or methodologies that need to be resolved by business entity interaction. While there can be a common understanding between the business entities, in the federated approach, no business entity imposes their own models, languages and methods of work.To establish interoperability, parties shall accommodate and adjust their operations. Interoperation can be supported by providing a priori information about the capabilities of the entities to be involved in the exchange or by employing agents to discover the needed information. Support for the a priori case can be provided by establishing entity capability profile s that hold syntactic and semantic information on both entity inputs and outputs. Interoperability can be established by mapping corresponding input and output information of the entities and identifying inconsistencies. Any remaining inconsistencies shall be resolved by manual interventions.This approach is more suitable for peer-to-peer situations, where each enterprise has resources for negotiation and compromise. The approach is particularly adapted to virtual enterprises, where diverse companies combine their resources and knowledge to manufacture a product for a limited duration.NOTE Using the federated approach to develop enterprise interoperability is most challenging. A main research area is development of a mapping factory that can generate on-demand customized “anybody-anywhere-anytime” mapping agents among existing systems. It is worth noting that a specific support for the federated approach is seen in entity profiles, which identify particular entity characteristics and properties relevant for interoperation (e.g. ISO 15745 and ISO 16100).