Systems Interoperability Types: The Conclusion to Our Tertiary Study

This paper is available on arxiv under CC 4.0 license. Authors: (1) RITA S. P. MACIEL, Federal University of Bahia, Brazil; (2) PEDRO H. VALLE, Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil; (3) KÉCIA S. SANTOS, Federal University of Bahia, Brazil; (4) ELISA Y. NAKAGAWA, University of São Paulo, Brazil. Table of Links Introduction Related Work Research Method Results Discussions Conclusions & References 6 CONCLUSIONS Implementing interoperability in SIS is very challenging not only in large technology-oriented systems with complicated interactions but also in small and medium-sized systems where a balance of the benefits and drawbacks of adopting existing interoperability models, frameworks, or solutions is required. Organizations, research communities, and industries demonstrate a continuous interest in better understanding the different interoperability types and the actual relationships among them and in proposing different solutions. In this scenario, our tertiary study systematically retrieved 586 studies (494 during the first conduction and 92 during the update) and scrutinized 37 studies that satisfied our criteria and were published from 2012 to 2023. This work contributes with an updated and broad view of SIS interoperability, including 36 interoperability types, distilling their definitions and classifying them, and different ways to organize them that several models and frameworks have provided. We observe these types that emerged over the years reflect how the field has evolved, showing the trends and serving as a basis for solutions. Considering such types, we analyzed several models, frameworks, and diverse domains concerned with interoperability. We identified important findings, open issues, urgent actions to be further performed, and potential research opportunities. Therefore, this work can be considered a step toward a body of knowledge on SIS interoperability. For the future, a critical step is to change the mindset of practitioners and researchers that interoperability must be treated as a multidisciplinary field, which should also deal with interoperability outside the systems (e.g., legal, political, and cultural interoperability). In this perspective, this work intends to call attention to the current scenario of the field, increase the awareness of SIS interoperability, and contribute with a body of knowledge that should be updated continuously to keep it aligned with the state of the art in the field, which is indeed dynamic. This research was funded by Bahia Research Foundation - FAPESB (Grant: TIC0002/2015), São Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP (Grants: 2022/03276-6, 2015/24144-7), and National Council for Scientific and Technological Development - CNPq (Grant: 313245/2021-5). Acknowledgments: REFERENCES [1] Adebesin, F., Foster, R., Kotzé, P., van Greunen, D., 2013. A review of interoperability standards in e-health and imperatives for their adoption in africa. South African Computer Journal 50, 55–72. [2] Allian, A.P., Schnicke, F., Antonino, P.O., Rombach, D., Nakagawa, E.Y., 2021. Architecture drivers for trustworthy interoperability in industry 4.0. IEEE Systems Journal 15, 5454–5463. [3] Amanowicz, M., Gajewski, P., 1996. Military communications and information systems interoperability, in: IEEE Military Communications Conference (MILCOM), pp. 280–283. [4] Amjad, A., Azam, F., Anwar, M., Butt, W., 2021. A systematic review on the data interoperability of application layer protocols in industrial iot. IEEE Access 9, 96528–96545. [5] Ampatzoglou, A., Bibi, S., Avgeriou, P., Verbeek, M., Chatzigeorgiou, A., 2019. Identifying, categorizing and mitigating threats to validity in software engineering secondary studies. Information and Software Technology 106, 201–230. [6] Arcaini, P., Bonfanti, S., Gargantini, A., Riccobene, E., Scandurra, P., 2020. Modelling an automotive software-intensive system with adaptive features using asmeta, in: Rigorous State-Based Methods: 7th International Conference, ABZ 2020, Ulm, Germany, May 27–29, 2020, Proceedings, Springer. pp. 302–317. [7] Asuncion, C., Van Sinderen, M., 2010. Pragmatic interoperability: A systematic review of published definitions, in: IFIP International Conference on Enterprise Architecture, Integration and Interoperability (Eai2n), pp. 164–175. [8] Asuncion, C.H., 2011. Pragmatic interoperability in the enterprise-a research agenda., in: CAiSE (Doctoral Consortium), pp. 3–14. [9] Athena, D., 2005. Framework for the establishment and management methodology, version 1.0, ATHENA IP. Interoperability Research for Networked Enterprises Applications and Software . [10] Ayaz, M., Pasha, M.F., Alzahrani, M.Y., Budiarto, R., Stiawan, D., 2021. The fast health interoperability resources (FHIR) standard: systematic literature review of implementations, applications, challenges and opportunities. JMIR Medical Informatics 9. [11] Barros-Justo, J., Benitti, F., Matalonga, S., 2019. Trends in software reuse research: A tertiary study. Computer Standards and Interfaces 66, 103352. [12] Belchior, R., Vasconcelos, A., Guerreiro, S., Correia, M., 2021. A survey on blockchain interoperability: Past, present, and future trends. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 54, 1–41. [13] Bernstein, P.A., 1996. Middleware: a model for distributed system services. Communications of the ACM 39, 86–98. [14] Bitkom, VDMA, and ZVEI, 2016. Implementation strategy Industrie 4.0: Report on the results of the Industrie 4.0 platform. URL: https://www. bitkom.org/Bitkom/Publikationen/Implementation-Strategy-Industrie-40-Report-on-the-results-of-the-Industrie-40-Platform.html. (Accessed in 10/03/2023). [15] Bourque, P., Fairley, R., 2014. SWEBOK: Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge. Version 3.0 ed., IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA. URL: http://www.swebok.org/. (Accessed in 10/03/2023). [16] Bouziat, T., Camps, V., Combettes, S., 2018. A cooperative sos architecting approach based on adaptive multi-agent systems, in: International Workshop on Software Engineering for Systems-of-Systems (SESoS), ACM, Gothenburg, Sweden. pp. 8–16. [17] Brabra, H., Mtibaa, A., Sliman, L., Gaaloul, W., Gargouri, F., 2016. Semantic web technologies in cloud computing: a systematic literature review, in: 2016 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC), IEEE. pp. 744–751. [18] Bryant, R., Dortmund, A., Lavoie, B., 2020. Social interoperability in research support: Cross-campus partnerships and the university research enterprise. OCLC Online Computer Library Center. [19] Burns, T., Cosgrove, J., Doyle, F., 2019. A review of interoperability standards for industry 4.0. Procedia Manufacturing 38, 646–653. [20] Burzlaff, F., Wilken, N., Bartelt, C., Stuckenschmidt, H., 2019 (2022). Semantic interoperability methods forsmart service systems: A survey. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management 69, 4052–4066. [21] C4ISR Architecture Working Group and others, 1998. Levels of information systems interoperability (LISI). United States of America Department of Defense . [22] C4ISR Interoperability Working Group, 1998. Levels of information systems interoperability (LISI). Technical Report. US Department of Defense, Washington, DC. [23] Casiano Flores, C., Rodriguez Müller, A.P., Albrecht, V., Crompvoets, J., Steen, T., Tambouris, E., 2021. Towards the inclusion of co-creation in the european interoperability framework, in: International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance, pp. 538–540. [24] Chen, D., 2006. Enterprise interoperability framework, in: EMOI-INTEROP. [25] Chetty, M., Botha, A., Herselman, M., 2020. An instantiation of a process model towards health interoperability, in: South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists 2020, pp. 180–188. [26] Clark, T., Jones, R., 1999. Organisational interoperability maturity model for c2, in: Proceedings of the 1999 Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium, Citeseer. [27] Cloutier, R.J., 2017. Guide to the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK), version 1.8. URL: https://www.sebokwiki.org. (Accessed in 10/03/2023). [28] Dersin, P., 2014. Systems of systems. IEEE-Reliability Society. Technical Committee on “Systems of Systems”, url = https://rs.ieee.org/ technicalactivities/technical-committees/ systems-of-systems.html, note = (Accessed in 10/03/2023),. [29] Dyba, T., Kitchenham, B.A.,Jorgensen, M., 2005. Evidence-based software engineering for practitioners. IEEE Software 22, 58–65. [30] EIF, 2017. Interoperability solutions for public administrations, businesses and citizens. About ISA2. Technical Report. https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/isa2_en. [31] Elheni-Daldoul, D., Le Duigou, J., Eynard, B., Hajri-Gabouj, S., 2013. Enterprise information systems’ interoperability: Focus on plm challenges, in: IFIP International Conference on Advances in Production Management Systems (APMS), pp. 184–191. [32] Ezzat, S.K., Saleh, Y.N., Abdel-Hamid, A.A., 2022. Blockchain oracles: State-of-the-art and research directions. IEEE Access 10, 67551–675772. [33] Ford, T., Colombi, J., Graham, S., Jacques, D., 2007. Survey on interoperability measurement. Technical Report. Air Force Institute of Technology, US. [34] Fraga, A.L., Vegetti, M., Leone, H.P., 2020. Ontology-based solutions for interoperability among product lifecycle management systems: A systematic literature review. Journal of Industrial Information Integration 20, 100176. [35] Guédria, W., Chen, D., Naudet, Y., 2009. A maturity model for enterprise interoperability, in: OTM Confederated International Conferences" On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems", Springer. pp. 216–225. [36] Gürdür, D., Asplund, F., 2018. A systematic review to merge discourses: Interoperability, integration and cyber-physical systems. Journal of Industrial information integration 9, 14–23. [37] Gürdür, D., Asplund, F., El-khoury, J., 2016. Measuring tool chain interoperability in cyber-physical systems, in: 11th System of Systems Engineering Conference (SoSE), pp. 1–4. [38] Guédria, W., Gaaloul, K., Proper, H., Naudet, Y., 2013. Research methodology for enterprise interoperability architecture approach, in: International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering Workshops (CAiSE), pp. 16–19. [39] Handley, H., 2014. A network model for human interoperability. Human Factors 56, 349–360. [40] Hanssen, G., Šmite, D., Moe, N., 2011. Signs of agile trends in global software engineering research: A tertiary study, in: IEEE 6th International Conference on Global Software Engineering Workshop (ICGSE-W), pp. 17–23. [41] Haugum, T., Hoff, B., Alsadi, M., Li, J., 2022. Security and privacy challenges in blockchain interoperability-a multivocal literature review, in: Proceedings of the International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering 2022, pp. 347–356. [42] Hazra, A., Adhikari, M., Amgoth, T., Srirama, S.N., 2021. A comprehensive survey on interoperability for iiot: taxonomy, standards, and future directions. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 55, 1–35. [43] IEEE, 1990. IEEE standard glossary of software engineering terminology (IEEE Std 610.12-1990). CA: IEEE Computer Society 169. [44] Industrial Internet Consortium, 2019. Industrial Internet Reference Architecture (IIRA). URL: https://www.iiconsortium.org/IIRA.htm. (Accessed in 10/03/2023). [45] International Electrotechnical Commission, 2017. IEC PAS 63088:2017 Smart manufacturing - Reference architecture model Industry 4.0 (RAMI4.0). [46] Jiang, S.,Jakobsen, K., Jaccheri, L., Li, J., 2021. Blockchain and sustainability: A tertiary study, in: IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Body of Knowledge for Software Sustainability (BoKSS), pp. 7–8. [47] Kaur, K., Sharma, D.S., Kahlon, D.K.S., 2017. Interoperability and portability approaches in inter-connected clouds: A review. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 50, 1–40. [48] Kingston, G., Fewell, S., Richer, W., 2005. An organisational interoperability agility model. Technical Report. Defence Science and Technology Organisation Canberra (Australia). [49] Kitchenham, B., Pretorius, R., Budgen, D., Brereton, O., Turner, M., Niazi, M., Linkman, S., 2010. Systematic literature reviews in software engineering – a tertiary study. Information and Software Technology 52, 792–805. [50] Kitchenham, B.A., Budgen, D., Brereton, P., 2015. Evidence-based software engineering and systematic reviews. volume 4. CRC press, Boca Raton, USA. [51] LaVean, G., 1980. Interoperability in defense communications. IEEE transactions on communications 28, 1445–1455. [52] Leal, G., Guédria, W., Panetto, H., 2019. Interoperability assessment: A systematic literature review. Computers in Industry 106, 111–132. [53] Lee, A.R., Kim, I.K., Lee, E., 2021. Developing a transnational health record framework with level-specific interoperability guidelines based on a related literature review, in: Healthcare, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute. p. 67. [54] Li, W., Park, J., 2017. Design and implementation of integration architecture of ISO 11073 DIM with FHIR resources using CoAP, in: 2017 International Conference on Information and Communications (ICIC), pp. 268–273. [55] Lim, S., Rahmani, R., 2020. Toward semantic iot load inference attention management for facilitating healthcare and public health collaboration: A survey. Procedia Computer Science 177, 371–378. [56] Loutsaris, M.A., Charalabidis, Y., 2020. Legal informatics from the aspect of interoperability: A review of systems, tools and ontologies, in: International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance, pp. 731–737. [57] Maciel, R., David, J., Claro, D., Braga, R., 2017. Full interoperability: Challenges and opportunities for future information systems. Grand Research Challenges in Information Systems in Brazil 2016 2026, 107–116. [58] Mane, B., Mascarenhas, A., Quinteiro, G., Maciel, R., Claro, D., 2022. A model-driven approach for interoperability among SaaS and DaaS/DBaaS: The MIDAS case. SN Computer Science 3, 1–18. [59] Mansour, I., Sahandi, R., Cooper, K., Warman, A., 2016. Interoperability in the heterogeneous cloud environment: a survey of recent user-centric approaches, in: International Conference on Internet of Things and Cloud Computing (ICC), pp. 1–7. [60] Mello, B., Rigo, S., Costa, C., Righi, R., Donida, B., Bez, M., Schunke, L., 2022. Semantic interoperability in health records standards: a systematic literature review. Health and Technology , 1–18. [61] Moreno-Conde, A., Moner, D., Cruz, W.D.d., Santos, M.R., Maldonado, J.A., Robles, M., Kalra, D., 2015. Clinical information modeling processes for semantic interoperability of electronic health records: systematic review and inductive analysis. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 22, 925–934. [62] Motta, R., Oliveira, K., Travassos, G., 2019. A conceptual perspective on interoperability in context-aware software systems. Information and Software Technology 114, 231–257. [63] Motta, R.C., De Oliveira, K.M., Travassos, G.H., 2017. Rethinking interoperability in contemporary software systems, in: 2017 IEEE/ACM Joint 5th International Workshop on Software Engineering for Systems-of-Systems and 11th Workshop on Distributed Software Development, Software Ecosystems and Systems-of-Systems (JSOS), IEEE. pp. 9–15. [64] Muller, M., Esmanioto, F., Huber, N., Loures, E., Junior, O., 2019. A systematic literature review of interoperability in the green building information modeling lifecycle. Journal of Cleaner Production 223, 397–412. [65] Nakagawa, E.Y., Antonino, P.O., Schnicke, F., Capilla, R., Kuhn, T., Liggesmeyer, P., 2021. Industry 4.0 reference architectures: State of the art and future trends. Computers Industrial Engineering 156, 107241. [66] NATO, 2003. NATO Allied Data Publication 34: NATO C3 Technical Architecture. Vol 2. Technical Report. [67] Negulescu, F.C., et al., 2011. Interoperability in strategic combined joint special operations. Defense Resources Management in the 21st Century 6, 136–140. [68] Neiva, F.W., David, J.M.N., Braga, R., Campos, F., 2016. Towards pragmatic interoperability to support collaboration: A systematic review and mapping of the literature. Information and Software Technology 72, 137–150. [69] Nilsson, J., Sandin, F., 2018. Semantic interoperability in industry 4.0: Survey of recent developments and outlook, in: 2018 IEEE 16th International Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN), pp. 127–132. [70] Noura, M., Atiquzzaman, M., Gaedke, M., 2019. Interoperability in internet of things: Taxonomies and open challenges. Mobile Networks and Applications 24, 796–809. [71] Pedone, G., Mezgár, I., 2018. Model similarity evidence and interoperability affinity in cloud-ready industry 4.0 technologies. Computers in industry 100, 278–286. [72] Raatikainen, M., Tiihonen, J., Männistö, T., 2019. Software product lines and variability modeling: A tertiary study. Journal of Systems and Software 149, 485–510. [73] Reegu, F.A., Abas, H., Jabbari, A., Akmam, R., Uddin, M., Wu, C.M., Chin-Ling, C., Khalaf, O.I., 2022. Interoperability requirements for blockchainenabled electronic health records in healthcare: A systematic review and open research challenges. Security and Communication Networks 2022. [74] Rezaei, R., Chiew, T.K., Lee, S.P., 2014a. An interoperability model for ultra large scale systems. Advances in Engineering Software 67, 22–46. [75] Rezaei, R., Chiew, T.K., Lee, S.P., 2014b. A review on e-business interoperability frameworks. Journal of Systems and Software 93, 199–216. [76] Rezaei, R., Chiew, T.K., Lee, S.P., Shams Aliee, Z., 2014c. Interoperability evaluation models: A systematic review. Computers in Industry 65, 1–23. [77] Ryhänen, K., Päivärinta, T., Tyrväinen, P., 2014. Generic data models for Semantic e-Government interoperability: Literature Review. IOS Press. pp. 106–119. [78] Santos, K., Pinheiro, L., Maciel, R., 2021. Interoperability types classifications: A tertiary study, in: 17th Brazilian Symposium on Information Systems (SBSI), pp. 1–8. [79] Saravanakumar, C., Arun, C., 2014. Survey on interoperability, security, trust, privacy standardization of cloud computing, in: 2014 International Conference on Contemporary Computing and Informatics (IC3I), IEEE. pp. 977–982. [80] Shawish, A., Salama, M., 2014. Cloud computing: paradigms and technologies, in: Inter-cooperative collective intelligence: Techniques and applications. Springer, pp. 39–67. [81] Souza, S., Pereira Filho, J., 2019. Semantic interoperability in IoT: A systematic mapping, in: Internet of Things, Smart Spaces, and Next Generation Networks and Systems. Springer, pp. 53–64. [82] Stewart, K., Cremin, D., Mills, M., Phipps, D., 2004. Non-technical interoperability: The challenge of command leadership in multinational operations. Technical Report. Qinetiq Ltd Farnborough (UK) Centre for Human Sciences. [83] Szejka, A.L., Canciglieri Jr, O., Panetto, H., Rocha Loures, E., Aubry, A., 2017. Semantic interoperability for an integrated product development process: a systematic literature review. International Journal of Production Research 55, 6691–6709. [84] Tolk, A., 2003. Beyond technical interoperability-introducing a reference model for measures of merit for coalition interoperability. Technical Report. Old Dominion Univ Norfolk VA. [85] Tolk, A., 2013. Interoperability, composability, and their implications for distributed simulation: Towards mathematical foundations of simulation interoperability, in: 17th International Symposium on Distributed Simulation and Real Time Applications (DS-RT), IEEE. pp. 3–9. [86] Tolk, A., Diallo, S., Turnitsa, C., 2007. Applying the levels of conceptual interoperability model in support of integratability, interoperability, and composability for system-of-systems engineering. Journal of Systems, Cybernetics, and Informatics 5, 65–74. [87] Tolk, A., Muguira, J., 2003. The levels of conceptual interoperability model, in: Fall Simulation Interoperability Workshop, pp. 1–11. [88] Torab-Miandoab, A., Samad-Soltani, T., Jodati, A., Rezaei-Hachesu, P., 2023. Interoperability of heterogeneous health information systems: a systematic literature review. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 23, 18. [89] Turnitsa, C., 2005. Extending the levels of conceptual interoperability model . [90] Venceslau, A., Andrade, R., Vidal, V., Nogueira, T., Pequeno, V., 2019. IoT semantic interoperability: a systematic mapping study, in: International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, SciTePress. pp. 535–544. [91] Verner, J.M., Brereton, O.P., Kitchenham, B.A., Turner, M., Niazi, M., 2012. Systematic literature reviews in global software development: a tertiary study. IET Conference Proceedings . [92] Villarreal, E.D., García-Alonso, J., Moguel, E., Alegría, J.A.H., 2023. Blockchain for healthcare management systems: A survey on interoperability and security. IEEE Access . [93] W3C, 2022. World wide web consortium (w3c). URL: https://www.w3c.br/. (Accessed in 10/03/2023). [94] Wang, G., Wang, Q., Chen, S., 2023. Exploring blockchains interoperability: A systematic survey. ACM Computing Survey , 1–36(Just Accepted). [95] Wegner, P., 1996. Interoperability. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 28, 285–287. [96] Werder, K., Hyrynsalmi, S., Wang, X., 2021. Agile Transformation at Scale: A Tertiary Study. Springer International Publishing. [97] Widergren, S., Hardin, D., Ambrosio, R., Drummond, R., Gunther, E., Gilchrist, G., Cohen, D., 2007. Interoperability Context-Setting Framework. Technical Report. Pacific Northwest National Lab. Richland, US. [98] Wimmer, M.A., Boneva, R., Di Giacomo, D., 2018. Interoperability governance: a definition and insights from case studies in Europe, in: 19th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research: Governance in the Data Age (DGO), pp. 1–11. [99] Xu, Q., Chen, X., Li, S., Zhang, H., Babar, M.A., Tran, N.K., 2020. Blockchain-based solutions for IoT: A tertiary study, in: 20th International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability, and Security (QRS-C), pp. 124–131. [100] Yaqoob, R., Sanaa, Khan, S.U., Shah, M.A., 2021. Tertiary study on landscaping the review in code smells, in: IET Conference Publications, pp. 1–6. [101] Yousif Ahmed, S., Twinomurinzi, H., 2019. Exploring semantic interoperability in e-government interoperability frameworks for intra-African collaboration: A systematic literature review, in: 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), pp. 3182–3198. [102] Zwegers, A., 2003. IDEAS roadmap for ebusiness interoperability, in: eGovernment Interoperability Workshop. A. Structure of Interoperability Models and Frameworks This paper is available on under CC 4.0 license. arxiv