Interoperability
From Digipedia
| How useful is this article to you? 1 (not useful) - 5 (very useful) |
| Current average rating: 0 |
| Please login or create an account to rate this article |
Contents |
OVERVIEW
Interoperability is the process by which two or more machines or software systems can work together (interoperate). This is achieved through semantic interoperability and/or syntactic interoperability.
How interoperability works
Semantic interoperability is the process by which machines can interpret data and meaning without direct human intervention. This may mean that terminology is predefined in an Ontology or through Controlled vocabularies which then allows machines or software to derive meaning and use data automatically. Syntactic interoperability require rules governing data format and exchange which must be applied for heterogeneous systems to be able to work together. An example of an interoperable system would be data exchange between different devices such as address details taken from a laptop and transferred to a mobile phone through synchronisation.
Why consider interoperability?
When undertaking a digitisation project, it is important to consider interoperability to ensure that systems used conform to recognised standards and that resources created can be used across a range of platforms. Audience research will help determine some of this information. For a similar reason, it's important that software and hardware systems used in digitisation are widely supported to ensure legacy support for the resources created.
Related Digipedia articles
Further information
UKOLN's Interoperability focus
[[role::newcomer]] [[role::project manager]] [[role::technical support]] [[goal::sharing]] [[goal::content]] [[level::basic]] [[level::medium]]
