RE: Does standardisation assume interoperability?

Thanks for your input Giancarlo and Laufer. Is it fair to summarise as follows:

Two datasets are interoperable if:

a.       They are modelled according to the same standard.

b.      They are modelled according to standards that are interoperable

c.       They are modelled according to the same formal representation (not necessarily standardised)

(b) corresponds to a case where we know how the meaning of the elements in each standard relate to the elements in the other standard.
(c) corresponds to the case where you have used a reference ontology to facilitate the interoperability of ECG data.

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Deirdre Lee
Research Associate
eGovernment Domain (DEG)
Insight-NUIG
IDA BusinessPark, Lower Dangan,
Galway, Ireland

deirdre.lee@deri.org<mailto:deirdre.lee@deri.org>
skype: deirdrelee
twitter: @deirdrelee
linkedin: ie.linkedin.com/in/leedeirdre/<http://ie.linkedin.com/in/leedeirdre/>
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From: Giancarlo Guizzardi [mailto:gguizzardi@gmail.com]
Sent: 11 August 2014 09:00
To: Laufer
Cc: Lee, Deirdre; Data on the Web Best Practices Working Group
Subject: Re: Does standardisation assume interoperability?

Folks,

Regarding the two questions:

(a) Does standardization entail interoperability?
and (b) Can something be interoperable without being standardized?

Let us first settled what we mean by interoperability.
I will start with the following working definition of semantic interoperability:
A model X is semantically interoperable with model Y if we know
how the meaning of the elements in X relate to the meaning of elements in Y.
If we take "meaning" in the sense of referential semantics, this means that
we can always relate in the correct manner
the referents of the model elements in X with the referents
of the model elements in Y.

With that in mind (and answering (b)), we can achieve interoperability whenever we are able
to establish and fully understand the relation between the referents of X and Y.

Good standards certainly facilitate that.
However, if we put the question as "standardization ENTAILS interoperability" (question a),
the answer is clearly no.  To put it simply, this is because (among other reasons, including non-technical ones...)
there are bad standards. Bad standards in the sense that they are not sufficiently expressive and clear in helping
users to express their world views in terms of the standard.

There are many examples of domains with multiple standards
that it is far from obvious how to relate the meaning of things
in standard X and with the meaning of things in standard Y.
This is even the case in the so-called hard science domains.

To cite on example in heart Electrophysiogy.
In the following paper
http://www.j-biomed-inform.com/article/S1532-0464(10)00118-8/pdf
we show the difficulties in relating multiple existing ECG standards.
The paper is actually both an example of lack interoperability with
the presence of multiple standards as well as an example of
interoperability achieved with a reference ontology that is
not a standard, i.e., "interoperability without a standard".

Best,
Giancarlo
On Sat, Aug 9, 2014 at 3:04 AM, Laufer <laufer@globo.com<mailto:laufer@globo.com>> wrote:
Hi,
I don´t know if the following example makes sense to this discussion. But it comes to my mind.
Analog television has some different standards as, for example, PAL and NTSC, and they are not interoperable.
I don´t know if, in this case, the term should be compatible.
Best,
Laufer

2014-08-08 11:43 GMT-03:00 Lee, Deirdre <Deirdre.Lee@deri.org<mailto:Deirdre.Lee@deri.org>>:

Hi,

We had a good call today, addressing many of the raised issues for UCR. One issue that we felt warranted more discussion was ISSUE-23: Review definition of interoperability https://www.w3.org/2013/dwbp/track/issues/23


The following questions were raised: Does standardisation imply interoperability? Are there cases where data uses standards, but is not interoperable? Can interoperability be achieved independent of standardisation? In DWBP, should we have a specific definition of interoperability?

In the UCR, there are the following two requirements:

•         R-MetadataInteroperable

•         R-LicenseInteroperable

And also

•         R-MetadataMachineRead

•         R-MetadataStandardized


•         R-LicenseMachineRead

•         R-LicenseStandardized

Possible resolutions for the UCR could be:

a.       Remove R–MetadataInteroperable and R-LicenseInteroperable from UCR because they’re redundant

b.      Improve description of R-MetadataStandardized and R-LicenseStandardized

c.       Other?

Cheers,
Deirdre
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Deirdre Lee
Research Associate
eGovernment Domain (DEG)
Insight-NUIG
IDA BusinessPark, Lower Dangan,
Galway, Ireland

deirdre.lee@deri.org<mailto:deirdre.lee@deri.org>
skype: deirdrelee
twitter: @deirdrelee
linkedin: ie.linkedin.com/in/leedeirdre/<http://ie.linkedin.com/in/leedeirdre/>
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