Current Perspectives on Interoperability

This report describes current research within the software engineering community on the topic of interoperability between software systems. That research includes analyses of the different types of interoperability problems and issues and efforts to define models of interoperability that will aid in creating solutions to those problems. The report also describes work that is currently underway at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) in this area. That work originated in an independent research effort and now has grown into a separate technical initiative in the area of interoperability. The SEI initiative is currently focused on analyzing several aspects of interoperability: how it is manifest in different kinds of activities (i.e., programmatic vs. constructive vs. operational activities), the essential characteristics of interoperability, and the key principles on which solutions will depend.