What is Interoperability?

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The ability to see and share information across multiple blockchains is known as blockchain interoperability or cross-chain interoperability.

What is Blockchain Interoperability?

As earlier said, it is the ability to see and share information across multiple information. One obvious advantage of blockchain interoperability is the ability to trade assets across these blockchains without requiring a centralized, custodial exchange.

Interoperability is critical to the development of a blockchain because it allows users to exchange across different platforms. While there are solutions to blockchain interoperability, more is needed. Separate blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum need to be connected.

Interoperability Solutions

Wrapped tokens, also known as proxy tokens, are one popular solution. However the most popular is the Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC). Wrapped tokens, on the other hand, require a trusted custodian to hold user money or the development of a secure mint/burn protocol to ensure a consistent supply of crypto assets.

Komodo is one such project that is working on a native blockchain interoperability solution. This is accomplished through AtomicDEX, a decentralized exchange that supports 99 percent of crypto assets.

AtomicDEX

Atomic swaps, which are secure trades of digital assets made from one user to another via non-custodial wallets, allow AtomicDEX to achieve blockchain interoperability. As a result, decentralized bridges between different blockchains and protocols are being built.

AtomicDEX allows for native cross-chain trading. Thus, no wrapped tokens are required. Cosmos is another blockchain project that focuses on interoperability through its inter-blockchain communication (IBC) protocol.

Definition of Interoperability

Interoperability refers to the fundamental ability of various computerized products or systems to interact and function with others reciprocally. This is accomplished through either implementation or unrestricted access.

More Information About Interoperability

Interoperability is the ability to freely share and use data or resources between different systems through Local Area Networks (LANs) or Wide Area Networks (WANs).

There are two types of data interoperability: Syntactic Interoperability and Semantic Interoperability.

Syntactic Interoperability: This enables different software components to cooperate, allowing two or more systems to communicate and exchange data.

Semantic Interoperability: This refers to the ability of computer systems to exchange meaningful data with clear meaning.

Interoperability in simpler terms

It is very important to be able to share data effectively between databases and computer systems.

Interoperability is the property that allows unrestricted resource sharing between different systems. This can also refer to the ability to share data between different components or machines, both through software and hardware.

In short, Interoperability is the ability of two or more components or systems to exchange information and use that information.

What Is the Process of Interoperability?

To be interoperable, two or more systems must be able to exchange, interpret, and present shared data in a way that the other can understand. This is accomplished by combining Syntactic Interoperability and Semantic Interoperability.

Adherence to these common standards allows for the transmission of meaningful information that is independent of any information system.

In addition, benefits of Interoperability include; increased productivity, lower costs, and fewer errors.

What areas/fields do we need Interoperability in?

Healthcare: Hospitals and labs are increasingly implementing new technologies and devices that are powered by sophisticated software and must integrate at the point of care as well as with electronic systems such as electronic medical records
E-Government: solutions address challenges such as language in cross-border service collaboration for citizens, businesses, and public administrations.
Public Safety: addresses the ability of first responders in law enforcement, firefighting, EMS, and general public health and safety to effectively communicate with one another during large-scale emergencies.
Military: Military Interoperability refers to the ability of two or more nations’ forces to work together effectively and efficiently to achieve common tactical, operational, and strategic goals.
Flood Risk Management: the ability of a water management system to redirect water and use other systems to maintain or improve its performance during water events in the context of urban flood risks.

Distinguishing between Integration and Interoperability

While both subjects of discussion involve connecting applications and facilitating data transmission, the main distinction is in how the various systems communicate with one another.

Interoperability is the exchange of real-time data between different systems that communicate directly in the same language. Furthermore, they instantly interpret incoming data and present it in the context in which it was received.

Integration

Integration is the process of combining multiple applications to function as one continuous system, which frequently involves the use of middleware. It creates an environment in which a collection of products can communicate with one another in their current state while also remaining compatible with future versions of such products.

Interoperable systems, on the other hand, will lose their interoperability if the system is changed or upgraded. Data integration allows most industries that do not require interoperability to exchange data.

Difference between Compatibility and Interoperability

The technique by which two or more applications or systems interact within the same environment is known as compatibility. In this scenario, each system performs its expected tasks independently, without interfering with the performance of another application or system.

Compatibility differs from interoperability in that the two components do not need to communicate with one another and simply share the same environment.

What does Interoperability Testing entail?

Interoperability testing is the process of formally testing systems or applications in a production environment. This is done to ensure that standards have been established clearly and to detect potential discrepancies.

Features of Interoperability Testing

Ease of use
Syntax and data format compatibility
Adequate logical and physical connection methods.

Interoperability Testing Methodology

The PCDA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) Cycle is a common interoperability testing methodology.

Plan: Figure out the function, behavior, input, and output for all applications and test each one individually for flaws.
Do: Carry out functional and non-functional testing, log and resolve defects, re-test the entire system, and report results.
Check: Review test results to ensure that all expected requirements are met and that all applications have been traversed.
Act: Identify and continue to implement good practices; identify and correct poor practices.

Does HEAVY.AI Provide Data Integration Solutions?

HEAVY.AI provides solutions for seamless big data integration. Today’s data managers face a growing ecosystem of data sources and warehouses, making big data integration more complex than ever.

The HEAVY.iDB open-source database serves as a hot cache for analytical datasets and can process millions of records per second

Things to Note about the types of Interoperability

Syntactic interoperability occurs when two or more systems use common data formats and communication protocols and can communicate with one another.

Common data formats and protocols include XML and SQL.

Lower-level data formats also contribute to syntactic interoperability.

Semantic interoperability is the ability to automatically interpret meaningful and accurate information exchanged to produce useful results.

More things to note

In semantic interoperability, both parties must use the same reference model for information exchange.

What is sent is the same as what is understood in Semantic Interoperability.

Multiple social, organizational, political, and legal entities collaborate for a common interest or information

Relationship between Open standards and interoperability

Interoperability entails exchanging products from various vendors, similar products from different vendors, or even past and future revisions of the same product. By using open standards, interoperability can be developed after the fact as a special measure between two products while excluding the rest.

It is compatibility, not interoperability when a vendor is forced to adapt its system to a dominant system that is not based on Open standards.

Open Standards

Open standards are developed by a group of experts who examine and debate the merits, demerits, and feasibility of a proposed common protocol.

The resulting document is endorsed as a common standard and becomes an open standard. It is usually published and available freely or at a nominal cost to all interested parties.

Vendors can make products that implement the common protocol defined in the standard. There is no specific advantage for customers for choosing one product over another based on standardized features.

What influences a customer’s choice?

Implementation quality
User interface
Ease of use
Performance
Price Etc

Note: The customer’s data are intact and transferable even if he chooses to switch to another competing product for business reasons.

Post Facto Interoperability

Post facto interoperability may be the result of the market dominance of a particular product. A vendor can choose to ignore any forthcoming standards and not co-operate in any standardization process at all.

This is not a problem if the product’s implementation is open and minimally encumbered, but it may as well be closed and heavily encumbered.

Because of the network effect, software developed by one vendor on equal terms with its competitor is difficult to collaborate with. In the absence of technical data, newer implementations frequently rely on clean-room reverse engineering to achieve interoperability.

Why is this not equivalent to an open Standard?

There are several reasons why the availability of such data does not imply an open standard.

A vendor may have a vested interest in preventing the effective implementation of competing solutions. Thus he may subtly alter or change his product, often in newer revisions, so that competitors’ implementations are nearly, but not entirely, interoperable.
The data itself may be encumbered, for example, by patents or pricing, causing all competing solutions to be dependent on the original vendor and possibly leading to a revenue stream from competitors’ customers back to the vendor.

More Reasons

Anyone can identify and correct such limitations in an open process, and the resulting cleaner specification can be used by all vendors. Customers, however, have valuable information and processes encoded in the faulty but dominant product, and other vendors are forced to replicate those flaws and quirks.
Customers may be inconvenienced if there is no open standard. Many customers would bear the cost of any interoperability breakdown caused by resolving the original issue and introducing new behavior.

Government

E-Government

Interoperability in e-government refers to the ability of cross-border services for citizens, businesses, and public administrations to collaborate. Data exchange can be difficult due to language barriers, different format specifications, and a wide range of categorizations. Many more impediments can be identified.

Collaboration is limited, takes longer, and is inefficient when data is interpreted differently. Data exchange between E-Government applications must be semantically interoperable. This saves time and money while also reducing error sources. For effective data exchange, clear concepts of interpretation patterns are required.

Flood Risk Management

A systems-based approach to water and flood management is required. Interoperability is critical in flood management to facilitate a system of systems thinking. It may be possible to increase the overall system’s capacity to manage flood water by assessing the complex properties of urban infrastructure systems.

Military Forces

NATO Force Interoperability facilitates coalition formation. The benefits of operational and tactical interoperability are generally derived from the interchangeability of force elements and units. “Technological interoperability” is concerned with communications and computers, but it also includes system technical capabilities.

Public Safety

Interoperability is critical for law enforcement, fire departments, EMS, and other public health departments. Some states, including Utah, have already made significant progress. The Utah Highway Patrol and other Utah departments use technology developed by a company based in Bountiful, Utah.

Virginia’s Interoperability Coordinator uses a regional structure to better distribute grant funding across the state. The state of Washington is working to improve interoperability throughout the state. Collaboration on system design and development for wireless radio systems enables emergency response agencies to provide additional services more efficiently

Contribution of the US Government

First and foremost, it is important to understand that this work saves the lives of emergency personnel and the citizens they serve.

The United States government is working to address the country’s lack of public safety interoperability. The OIC will collaborate with agencies in a variety of locations, including Silicon Valley, on this project. Case studies will be used to identify best practices and challenges associated with linking CAD systems.

As the interoperability regulator

Through their legislative and executive powers, governance entities can improve interoperability. For example, in 2021, the European Commission proposed the implementation of a standardization – for iterations of USB-C.

However, this may increase interoperability, convergence, and convenience for consumers while decreasing resource needs, redundancy, and electronic waste. In addition, they proposed commissioning two impact assessment studies and a technical analysis study.

Commerce and Industries

Computers and Information Technology.

Desktop interoperability (also spelled interop) is a subset of software interoperability. The initial focus of ‘interop’ was to integrate web applications with other web applications. Over time, open-system ‘containers’ were created to create a virtual desktop environment in which these applications could be registered and communicate with one another using simple pub/sub-patterns.

There were also rudimentary UI capabilities that allowed windows to be grouped with other windows.

Evolving of computers

Today, desktop interoperability has evolved into full-service interop platforms that include container support and basic web-to-web exchange. In addition, native support for other application types and advanced window management are provided. The most recent interoperability platforms also include application services such as universal search, notifications, user permissions and preferences, and third-party application connectors and laptop adapters.

Searching for Information

The ability of two or more information collections to be searched by a single query is referred to as search interoperability.

The challenge of interoperability in web-based search stems from the fact that designers of web resources typically have little or no need to worry about exchanging information with other web resources. Federated Search technology, which imposes no format requirements on data owners, has emerged as one solution to search interoperability issues.

Furthermore, standards such as OAI-PMH, RDF, and SPARQL have recently emerged to help address the issue of search interoperability about web resources. These standards also address broader interoperability issues, such as allowing data mining.

Software

Interoperability is defined as the ability to communicate, execute programs, or transfer data among various functional units in a way that requires the user to have little or no knowledge of the unique characteristics of those units, according to ISO/IEC 2382-01 Information Technology Vocabulary, Fundamental terms.

In terms of software, various programs can exchange data using common exchange formats, read and write in the same way, and use the same protocols.

Interoperability can be caused by a failure to pay attention to standardization during program design.

Why is it confusing?

It’s worth noting that the definition is a little confusing because a program’s user can be another program. Therefore, if the latter is part of a collection of programs that must be interoperable, it’s possible that it has to know about the features of other units.

This definition focuses on the technical side of interoperability, even though interoperability is often more of an organizational issue.

Issues involved

Interoperability frequently has a significant impact on the organizations involved, raising issues of;

OWNERSHIP (do people want to share their data? or are they dealing with information silos? )
LABOR RELATIONS(are people willing to undergo training?) and
USABILITY.

In this case, a better definition may be found in Business Process Interoperability.

What kind of effect does interoperability have?

Interoperability can have significant economic effects; for example, insufficient interoperability in the US capital facilities business is predicted to cost $15.8 billion per year, according to studies. If rivals’ products aren’t interoperable (due to things like patents, trade secrets, or coordination issues), monopoly or market failure may result.

As a result, user communities or governments may find it prudent to take actions to foster interoperability in a variety of situations.

Software Specifications

The Oasis-Open organization and buildingSMART are two examples of Standards Defining Organizations (SDOs) that create open public software specifications to encourage interoperability (formerly the International Alliance for Interoperability).

In terms of user communities, Neutral Third Party is developing business process interoperability standards. The RFC documents are another example of a neutral party.

Achieving Software

Software interoperability can be achieved through:

Product Testing

The clarity of standards is critical for systems created to a common standard, or a sub-profile thereof. However, system or unit testing may fail to detect inconsistencies in their implementations. This necessitates formal testing of systems in a production environment, as they will be implemented in the end.

Product Engineering:

Implement a common standard with intention of achieving interoperability through software implementation also following the same standard.

Other ways it can be achieved

Industry/community Partnership:

Standard workgroups are sponsored by industry-community collaborations, both domestic and international, to define a common standard that may be utilized to allow software systems to communicate for a specific purpose. Occasionally, industry or community will sub-profile an existing standard created by another organization to minimize options and make implementations more interoperable.

IP and common technology:

By decreasing heterogeneity between components from different sets of separately produced software products and so allowing them to communicate more easily, the usage of a common technology or IP may speed up and minimize the complexity of interoperability. This method achieves some of the same technical results as utilizing a standard vendor product to achieve interoperability. Third-party libraries can provide common technology.

Standard Implementation

Software interoperability necessitates a shared understanding, which is usually reached through an industry, national, or international standard.

Power and supremacy in the market

Experts tend to view interoperability as a problem, and its implications for everyday life are often overlooked. The Microsoft battle in the European Union demonstrates how interoperability affects fundamental power dynamics.

Microsoft abused its market position by purposefully preventing compatibility between Windows work group servers and non-Microsoft work group servers, according to the European Commission in 2004.

It was able to maintain its strong market position in workgroup server operating systems, which are at the heart of corporate IT networks, by doing so.

The Interoperability Remedy

Microsoft has been compelled to release complete and accurate interface documentation, allowing competitor suppliers to compete on an even playing field (“the interoperability remedy”). After rejecting prior proposals as insufficient, the Commission is currently market testing a new proposal by Microsoft to do so as of June 2005.

Patent Debates and Fees

Interoperability was also discussed in the European Parliament’s software patent debate (June–July 2005).

Customers will have to pay license fees twice, according to critics because patents on interoperability techniques are kept under RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) conditions.

Customers will have to pay license fees both for the product and the patent-protected program.

The Medical Industry

Both healthcare providers and industry have been paying close attention to the requirement for “plug-and-play” interoperability. Software that combines at the point of treatment and with electronic systems is found in medical devices such as incubators and imaging systems.

Experts like Angela N Johnson explored how companies creating innovative medical devices might collaborate more effectively to align software systems at the 2016 Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society (RAPS) convention.

Railways

Railways have varying degrees of interoperability based on gauge, brakes, signaling, communications, structure gauge, and operating norms, to name a few aspects. Different railway platform height and width clearance standards may also generate interoperability issues for passenger rail service.

The freight and intercity passenger railroads in North America are highly interoperable. Europe, Asia, Africa, Central, and South America, and Australia, on the other hand, have significantly less developed systems.

What is the hardest parameter to overcome?

The hardest parameter to overcome (at a reasonable cost) is gauge incompatibility, notwithstanding the growing usage of variable gauge axle systems.