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96-958: Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader definition takes into account social, political, and organizational factors that impact system-to-system performance. Types of interoperability include syntactic interoperability , where two systems can communicate with each other, and cross-domain interoperability , where multiple organizations work together and exchange information. If two or more systems use common data formats and communication protocols then they are capable of communicating with each other and they exhibit syntactic interoperability . XML and SQL are examples of common data formats and protocols. Low-level data formats also contribute to syntactic interoperability, ensuring that alphabetical characters are stored in

192-562: A Java virtual machine . A program in Java, so long as it does not use system-specific functionality, will maintain interoperability with all systems that have a Java virtual machine available. Applications will maintain compatibility because, while the implementation is different, the underlying language interfaces are the same. Software interoperability is achieved through five interrelated ways: Each of these has an important role in reducing variability in intercommunication software and enhancing

288-443: A system of systems approach to water and flood control is necessary. In this context, interoperability is important to facilitate system-of-systems thinking, and is defined as: "the ability of any water management system to redirect water and make use of other system(s) to maintain or enhance its performance function during water exceedance events." By assessing the complex properties of urban infrastructure systems, particularly

384-618: A business context, the Information Technology Association of America has defined information technology as "the study, design, development, application, implementation, support, or management of computer-based information systems". The responsibilities of those working in the field include network administration, software development and installation, and the planning and management of an organization's technology life cycle, by which hardware and software are maintained, upgraded, and replaced. Information services

480-515: A clean-room re-implementation of version 7 Unix . In the early years of its existence, Coherent's developer Mark Williams Company received a visit from an AT&T delegation looking to determine whether MWC was infringing on AT&T Unix property. It has been released as open source. Clean-room design is usually employed as best practice, but not strictly required by law. In NEC Corp. v Intel Corp. (1990), NEC sought declaratory judgment against Intel's charges that NEC's engineers simply copied

576-652: A collaboration environment for component development, sharing, registration, and reuse in the early 2000s. A related initiative is the ongoing National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) work and component repository. The National Institute of Standards and Technology serves as an agency for measurement standards. Information technology Information technology ( IT ) is a set of related fields that encompass computer systems, software , programming languages , and data and information processing, and storage. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system ( IT system )

672-499: A common information exchange reference model. The content of the information exchange requests are unambiguously defined: what is sent is the same as what is understood. Cross-domain interoperability involves multiple social, organizational, political, legal entities working together for a common interest or information exchange. Interoperability implies exchanges between a range of products, or similar products from several different vendors, or even between past and future revisions of

768-604: A common understanding of the end goal to be achieved. Interoperability tends to be regarded as an issue for experts and its implications for daily living are sometimes underrated. The European Union Microsoft competition case shows how interoperability concerns important questions of power relationships. In 2004, the European Commission found that Microsoft had abused its market power by deliberately restricting interoperability between Windows work group servers and non-Microsoft work group servers. By doing so, Microsoft

864-542: A complete computing machine. During the Second World War , Colossus developed the first electronic digital computer to decrypt German messages. Although it was programmable , it was not general-purpose, being designed to perform only a single task. It also lacked the ability to store its program in memory; programming was carried out using plugs and switches to alter the internal wiring. The first recognizably modern electronic digital stored-program computer

960-475: A component of their 305 RAMAC computer system. Most digital data today is still stored magnetically on hard disks, or optically on media such as CD-ROMs . Until 2002 most information was stored on analog devices , but that year digital storage capacity exceeded analog for the first time. As of 2007 , almost 94% of the data stored worldwide was held digitally: 52% on hard disks, 28% on optical devices, and 11% on digital magnetic tape. It has been estimated that

1056-427: A consequence of a lack of attention to standardization during the design of a program. Indeed, interoperability is not taken for granted in the non-standards-based portion of the computing world. According to ISO/IEC 2382-01, Information Technology Vocabulary, Fundamental Terms , interoperability is defined as follows: "The capability to communicate, execute programs, or transfer data among various functional units in

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1152-555: A creative element. Although the clean-room approach had been used as preventative measure in view of possible litigation before (e.g. in the Phoenix BIOS case), the NEC v. Intel case was the first time that the clean-room argument was accepted in a US court trial. A related aspect worth mentioning here is that NEC did have a license for Intel's patents governing the 8086 processor. Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corp.

1248-559: A few parameters. For passenger rail service, different railway platform height and width clearance standards may also affect interoperability. North American freight and intercity passenger railroads are highly interoperable, but systems in Europe, Asia, Africa, Central and South America, and Australia are much less so. The parameter most difficult to overcome (at reasonable cost) is incompatibility of gauge, though variable gauge axle systems are increasingly used. In telecommunications ,

1344-596: A manner that requires the user to have little or no knowledge of the unique characteristics of those units". Standards-developing organizations provide open public software specifications to facilitate interoperability; examples include the Oasis-Open organization and buildingSMART (formerly the International Alliance for Interoperability). Another example of a neutral party is the RFC documents from

1440-463: A more apt definition is captured in the term business process interoperability . Interoperability can have important economic consequences; for example, research has estimated the cost of inadequate interoperability in the US capital facilities industry to be $ 15.8 billion a year. If competitors' products are not interoperable (due to causes such as patents , trade secrets or coordination failures ),

1536-450: A more efficient manner are usually seen as "just the cost of doing business." IT departments are allocated funds by senior leadership and must attempt to achieve the desired deliverables while staying within that budget. Government and the private sector might have different funding mechanisms, but the principles are more-or-less the same. This is an often overlooked reason for the rapid interest in automation and Artificial Intelligence , but

1632-473: A particular letter; possible delays in message delivery (up to several days); limits on the size of one message and on the total size of messages in the mailbox (personal for users). A software and hardware complex with a web interface that provides the ability to search for information on the Internet. A search engine usually means a site that hosts the interface (front-end) of the system. The software part of

1728-415: A particular product in contravention of any applicable standards, or if any effective standards were not present at the time of that product's introduction. The vendor behind that product can then choose to ignore any forthcoming standards and not co-operate in any standardization process at all, using its near-monopoly to insist that its product sets the de facto standard by its very market dominance. This

1824-405: A search engine is a search engine (search engine) — a set of programs that provides the functionality of a search engine and is usually a trade secret of the search engine developer company. Most search engines look for information on World Wide Web sites, but there are also systems that can look for files on FTP servers, items in online stores, and information on Usenet newsgroups. Improving search

1920-402: A stake in the development that discusses and debate the technical and economic merits, demerits and feasibility of a proposed common protocol. After the doubts and reservations of all members are addressed, the resulting common document is endorsed as a common standard . This document may be subsequently released to the public, and henceforth becomes an open standard . It is usually published and

2016-568: A statewide data sharing network. The Commonwealth of Virginia is one of the leading states in the United States in improving interoperability. The Interoperability Coordinator leverages a regional structure to better allocate grant funding around the Commonwealth so that all areas have an opportunity to improve communications interoperability. Virginia's strategic plan for communications is updated yearly to include new initiatives for

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2112-453: A strict clean-room approach in the development of their clone's microcode, during the trial, they hired an independent contractor who was only given access to specifications but ended up writing code that had certain similarities to both NEC's and Intel's code. From this evidence, the judge concluded that similarity in certain routines was a matter of functional constraints resulting from the compatibility requirements, and thus were likely free of

2208-464: A technology now obsolete. Electronic data storage, which is used in modern computers, dates from World War II, when a form of delay-line memory was developed to remove the clutter from radar signals, the first practical application of which was the mercury delay line. The first random-access digital storage device was the Williams tube , which was based on a standard cathode ray tube . However,

2304-428: Is not equivalent to an open standard, because: Speaking from an e-government perspective, interoperability refers to the collaboration ability of cross-border services for citizens, businesses and public administrations. Exchanging data can be a challenge due to language barriers, different specifications of formats, varieties of categorizations and other hindrances. If data is interpreted differently, collaboration

2400-955: Is a subset of software interoperability. In the early days, the focus of interoperability was to integrate web applications with other web applications. Over time, open-system containers were developed to create a virtual desktop environment in which these applications could be registered and then communicate with each other using simple publish–subscribe patterns . Rudimentary UI capabilities were also supported allowing windows to be grouped with other windows. Today, desktop interoperability has evolved into full-service platforms which include container support, basic exchange between web and web, but also native support for other application types and advanced window management. The very latest interop platforms also include application services such as universal search, notifications, user permissions and preferences, 3rd party application connectors and language adapters for in-house applications. Search interoperability refers to

2496-487: Is a term somewhat loosely applied to a variety of IT-related services offered by commercial companies, as well as data brokers . The field of information ethics was established by mathematician Norbert Wiener in the 1940s. Some of the ethical issues associated with the use of information technology include: Research suggests that IT projects in business and public administration can easily become significant in scale. Work conducted by McKinsey in collaboration with

2592-433: Is also worth noting that from a business perspective, Information technology departments are a " cost center " the majority of the time. A cost center is a department or staff which incurs expenses, or "costs", within a company rather than generating profits or revenue streams. Modern businesses rely heavily on technology for their day-to-day operations, so the expenses delegated to cover technology that facilitates business in

2688-441: Is an element of coalition willingness to work together over the long term to achieve and maintain shared interests against common threats. Interoperability at the operational and tactical levels is where strategic interoperability and technological interoperability come together to help allies shape the environment, manage crises, and win wars. The benefits of interoperability at the operational and tactical levels generally derive from

2784-422: Is available freely or at a nominal cost to any and all comers, with no further encumbrances . Various vendors and individuals (even those who were not part of the original group) can use the standards document to make products that implement the common protocol defined in the standard and are thus interoperable by design , with no specific liability or advantage for customers for choosing one product over another on

2880-566: Is commonly held in relational databases to take advantage of their "robust implementation verified by years of both theoretical and practical effort." As an evolution of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), XML's text-based structure offers the advantage of being both machine- and human-readable . Data transmission has three aspects: transmission, propagation, and reception. It can be broadly categorized as broadcasting , in which information

2976-768: Is generally an information system , a communications system , or, more specifically speaking, a computer system — including all hardware , software , and peripheral equipment — operated by a limited group of IT users, and an IT project usually refers to the commissioning and implementation of an IT system. IT systems play a vital role in facilitating efficient data management, enhancing communication networks, and supporting organizational processes across various industries. Successful IT projects require meticulous planning, seamless integration, and ongoing maintenance to ensure optimal functionality and alignment with organizational objectives. Although humans have been storing, retrieving, manipulating, and communicating information since

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3072-594: Is in contrast to the Franklin Ace 1000, which lost in the 1983 decision, Apple Computer, Inc. v. Franklin Computer Corporation . The previous PC "clone" examples are notable for not daring to fight IBM in court, even before the legal precedent for copyrighting firmware had been made. Other examples include ReactOS , an open-source operating system made from clean-room reverse-engineered components of Windows , and Coherent operating system,

3168-470: Is limited, takes longer and is inefficient. For instance, if a citizen of country A wants to purchase land in country B, the person will be asked to submit the proper address data. Address data in both countries include full name details, street name and number as well as a postal code . The order of the address details might vary. In the same language, it is not an obstacle to order the provided address data; but across language barriers, it becomes difficult. If

3264-407: Is not a problem if the product's implementation is open and minimally encumbered, but it may well be both closed and heavily encumbered (e.g. by patent claims). Because of the network effect , achieving interoperability with such a product is both critical for any other vendor if it wishes to remain relevant in the market, and difficult to accomplish because of lack of cooperation on equal terms with

3360-507: Is one of the priorities of the modern Internet (see the Deep Web article about the main problems in the work of search engines). Companies in the information technology field are often discussed as a group as the "tech sector" or the "tech industry." These titles can be misleading at times and should not be mistaken for "tech companies;" which are generally large scale, for-profit corporations that sell consumer technology and software. It

3456-424: Is still widely deployed more than 50 years later. IMS stores data hierarchically , but in the 1970s Ted Codd proposed an alternative relational storage model based on set theory and predicate logic and the familiar concepts of tables, rows, and columns. In 1981, the first commercially available relational database management system (RDBMS) was released by Oracle . All DMS consist of components, they allow

3552-417: Is transmitted unidirectionally downstream, or telecommunications , with bidirectional upstream and downstream channels. XML has been increasingly employed as a means of data interchange since the early 2000s, particularly for machine-oriented interactions such as those involved in web-oriented protocols such as SOAP , describing "data-in-transit rather than... data-at-rest". Hilbert and Lopez identify

3648-475: The European Commission , after commissioning two impact assessment studies and a technology analysis study, proposed the implementation of a standardization – for iterations of USB-C – of phone charger products, which may increase interoperability along with convergence and convenience for consumers while decreasing resource needs, redundancy and electronic waste . Desktop interoperability

3744-454: The Internet , which was equivalent to 51 million households. Along with the Internet, new types of technology were also being introduced across the globe, which has improved efficiency and made things easier across the globe. Along with technology revolutionizing society, millions of processes could be done in seconds. Innovations in communication were also crucial as people began to rely on

3840-576: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The Open Service for Lifecycle Collaboration community is working on finding a common standard in order that software tools can share and exchange data e.g. bugs, tasks, requirements etc. The final goal is to agree on an open standard for interoperability of open source application lifecycle management tools. Java is an example of an interoperable programming language that allows for programs to be written once and run anywhere with

3936-487: The University of Oxford suggested that half of all large-scale IT projects (those with initial cost estimates of $ 15 million or more) often failed to maintain costs within their initial budgets or to complete on time. Clean-room reverse engineering The term implies that the design team works in an environment that is "clean" or demonstrably uncontaminated by any knowledge of the proprietary techniques used by

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4032-461: The microcode of the 8086 processor in their NEC V20 clone. A US judge ruled that while the early, internal revisions of NEC's microcode were indeed a copyright violation, the later one, which actually went into NEC's product, although derived from the former, were sufficiently different from the Intel microcode it could be considered free of copyright violations. While NEC themselves did not follow

4128-432: The 16th century, and it was not until 1645 that the first mechanical calculator capable of performing the four basic arithmetical operations was developed. Electronic computers , using either relays or valves , began to appear in the early 1940s. The electromechanical Zuse Z3 , completed in 1941, was the world's first programmable computer, and by modern standards one of the first machines that could be considered

4224-1076: The Commonwealth ;– all projects and efforts are tied to this plan, which is aligned with the National Emergency Communications Plan, authored by the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Emergency Communications. The State of Washington seeks to enhance interoperability statewide. The State Interoperability Executive Committee (SIEC), established by the legislature in 2003, works to assist emergency responder agencies (police, fire, sheriff, medical, hazmat, etc.) at all levels of government (city, county, state, tribal, federal) to define interoperability for their local region. Washington recognizes that collaborating on system design and development for wireless radio systems enables emergency responder agencies to efficiently provide additional services, increase interoperability, and reduce long-term costs. This work saves

4320-624: The European Research Cluster on the Internet of Things (IERC) and IoT Semantic Interoperability Best Practices; four kinds of interoperability are distinguished: syntactical interoperability, technical interoperability, semantic interoperability, and organizational interoperability. In the United States, the General Services Administration Component Organization and Registration Environment (CORE.GOV) initiative provided

4416-685: The IBM-compatible BIOS to various PC clone manufacturers. Several other PC clone companies, including Corona Data Systems , Eagle Computer , and Handwell Corporation, were litigated by IBM for copyright infringement, and were forced to re-implement their BIOS in a way which did not infringe IBM's copyrights. The legal precedent for firmware being protected by copyright, however, hadn't been established until Apple Computer, Inc. v. Franklin Computer Corp. , 714 F.2d 1240 (3rd Circuit Court 1983). The three settlements by IBM, and

4512-710: The International Alliance for Interoperability started in 1994, and was renamed buildingSMART in 2005. In Europe, the European Commission and its IDABC program issue the European Interoperability Framework . IDABC was succeeded by the Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (ISA) program. They also initiated the Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe (SEMIC.EU). A European Land Information Service (EULIS)

4608-410: The Internet alone while e-commerce a decade later resulted in $ 289 billion in sales. And as computers are rapidly becoming more sophisticated by the day, they are becoming more used as people are becoming more reliant on them during the twenty-first century. Early electronic computers such as Colossus made use of punched tape , a long strip of paper on which data was represented by a series of holes,

4704-570: The OIC with agencies in several locations, including Silicon Valley . This program will use case studies to identify the best practices and challenges associated with linking CAD systems across jurisdictional boundaries. These lessons will create the tools and resources public safety agencies can use to build interoperable CAD systems and communicate across local, state, and federal boundaries. Governance entities can increase interoperability through their legislative and executive powers. For instance, in 2021

4800-564: The US, the lack of interoperability in the public safety realm become evident during the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center structures. Further evidence of a lack of interoperability surfaced when agencies tackled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina . In contrast to the overall national picture, some states, including Utah, have already made great strides forward. The Utah Highway Patrol and other departments in Utah have created

4896-653: The ability of two or more information collections to be searched by a single query. Specifically related to web-based search, the challenge of interoperability stems from the fact designers of web resources typically have little or no need to concern themselves with exchanging information with other web resources. Federated Search technology, which does not place format requirements on the data owner, has emerged as one solution to search interoperability challenges. In addition, standards, such as Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting , Resource Description Framework , and SPARQL , have emerged that also help address

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4992-449: The ability to take a medical device out of its box and easily make it work with one's other devices – has attracted great attention from both healthcare providers and industry. Increasingly, medical devices like incubators and imaging systems feature software that integrates at the point of care and with electronic systems, such as electronic medical records. At the 2016 Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society (RAPS) meeting, experts in

5088-417: The ability to transfer both plain text and formatted, as well as arbitrary files; independence of servers (in the general case, they address each other directly); sufficiently high reliability of message delivery; ease of use by humans and programs. Disadvantages of e-mail: the presence of such a phenomenon as spam (massive advertising and viral mailings); the theoretical impossibility of guaranteed delivery of

5184-527: The appearance of the term in 1990 contained within documents for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Innovations in technology have already revolutionized the world by the twenty-first century as people were able to access different online services. This has changed the workforce drastically as thirty percent of U.S. workers were already in careers in this profession. 136.9 million people were personally connected to

5280-567: The application of statistical and mathematical methods to decision-making , and the simulation of higher-order thinking through computer programs. The term is commonly used as a synonym for computers and computer networks , but it also encompasses other information distribution technologies such as television and telephones . Several products or services within an economy are associated with information technology, including computer hardware , software , electronics, semiconductors, internet , telecom equipment , and e-commerce . Based on

5376-407: The basis of standardized features. The vendors' products compete on the quality of their implementation, user interface, ease of use, performance, price, and a host of other factors, while keeping the customer's data intact and transferable even if he chooses to switch to another competing product for business reasons. Post facto interoperability may be the result of the absolute market dominance of

5472-416: The competitor. Typically, a clean-room design is done by having someone examine the system to be reimplemented and having this person write a specification. This specification is then reviewed by a lawyer to ensure that no copyrighted material is included. The specification is then implemented by a team with no connection to the original examiners. Phoenix Technologies sold its clean-room implementation of

5568-464: The computer to communicate through telephone lines and cable. The introduction of the email was considered revolutionary as "companies in one part of the world could communicate by e-mail with suppliers and buyers in another part of the world..." Not only personally, computers and technology have also revolutionized the marketing industry, resulting in more buyers of their products. During the year of 2002, Americans exceeded $ 28 billion in goods just over

5664-419: The constant pressure to do more with less is opening the door for automation to take control of at least some minor operations in large companies. Many companies now have IT departments for managing the computers , networks, and other technical areas of their businesses. Companies have also sought to integrate IT with business outcomes and decision-making through a BizOps or business operations department. In

5760-431: The data they store to be accessed simultaneously by many users while maintaining its integrity. All databases are common in one point that the structure of the data they contain is defined and stored separately from the data itself, in a database schema . In recent years, the extensible markup language (XML) has become a popular format for data representation. Although XML data can be stored in normal file systems , it

5856-504: The earliest writing systems were developed, the term information technology in its modern sense first appeared in a 1958 article published in the Harvard Business Review ; authors Harold J. Leavitt and Thomas L. Whisler commented that "the new technology does not yet have a single established name. We shall call it information technology (IT)." Their definition consists of three categories: techniques for processing,

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5952-648: The early 1990s, IBM was winning millions of dollars from settling BIOS copyright infringement lawsuits against some other PC clone manufacturers like Matsushita/ Panasonic (1987) and Kyocera (1993–1994), although the latter suit was for infringements between 1985 and 1990. Another clean-room design example is VTech 's successful clones of the Apple II ROMs for the Laser 128 , the only computer model, among dozens of Apple II compatibles, which survived litigation brought by Apple Computer . The "Laser 128 story"

6048-566: The emergence of information and communications technology (ICT). By the year of 1984, according to the National Westminster Bank Quarterly Review , the term information technology had been redefined as "The development of cable television was made possible by the convergence of telecommunications and computing technology (…generally known in Britain as information technology)." We then begin to see

6144-402: The exchange of information between agencies. Agencies' information systems such as computer-aided dispatch systems and records management systems functioned largely in isolation, in so-called information islands . Agencies tried to bridge this isolation with inefficient, stop-gap methods while large agencies began implementing limited interoperable systems. These approaches were inadequate and, in

6240-520: The execution of assigned missions and tasks. Additionally NATO defines interoperability more generally as the ability to act together coherently, effectively and efficiently to achieve Allied tactical, operational and strategic objectives. At the strategic level, interoperability is an enabler for coalition building. It facilitates meaningful contributions by coalition partners. At this level, interoperability issues center on harmonizing world views, strategies, doctrines, and force structures. Interoperability

6336-404: The exponential pace of technological change (a kind of Moore's law ): machines' application-specific capacity to compute information per capita roughly doubled every 14 months between 1986 and 2007; the per capita capacity of the world's general-purpose computers doubled every 18 months during the same two decades; the global telecommunication capacity per capita doubled every 34 months;

6432-551: The field like Angela N. Johnson with GE Healthcare and Jeff Shuren of the United States Food and Drug Administration provided practical seminars on how companies developing new medical devices, and hospitals installing them, can work more effectively to align interoperable software systems. Railways have greater or lesser interoperability depending on conforming to standards of gauge , couplings , brakes , signalling , loading gauge , and structure gauge to mention

6528-455: The field of data mining  — "the process of discovering interesting patterns and knowledge from large amounts of data"  — emerged in the late 1980s. The technology and services it provides for sending and receiving electronic messages (called "letters" or "electronic letters") over a distributed (including global) computer network. In terms of the composition of elements and the principle of operation, electronic mail practically repeats

6624-455: The first planar silicon dioxide transistors by Frosch and Derick in 1957, the MOSFET demonstration by a Bell Labs team. the planar process by Jean Hoerni in 1959, and the microprocessor invented by Ted Hoff , Federico Faggin , Masatoshi Shima , and Stanley Mazor at Intel in 1971. These important inventions led to the development of the personal computer (PC) in the 1970s, and

6720-443: The first transistorized computer developed at the University of Manchester and operational by November 1953, consumed only 150 watts in its final version. Several other breakthroughs in semiconductor technology include the integrated circuit (IC) invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1959, silicon dioxide surface passivation by Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick in 1955,

6816-488: The information stored in it and delay-line memory was volatile in the fact that it had to be continuously refreshed, and thus was lost once power was removed. The earliest form of non-volatile computer storage was the magnetic drum , invented in 1932 and used in the Ferranti Mark 1 , the world's first commercially available general-purpose electronic computer. IBM introduced the first hard disk drive in 1956, as

6912-432: The interchangeability of force elements and units. Technological interoperability reflects the interfaces between organizations and systems. It focuses on communications and computers but also involves the technical capabilities of systems and the resulting mission compatibility between the systems and data of coalition partners. At the technological level, the benefits of interoperability come primarily from their impacts at

7008-460: The interoperability between the drainage systems and other urban systems (e.g. infrastructure such as transport), it could be possible to expand the capacity of the overall system to manage flood water towards achieving improved urban flood resilience. Force interoperability is defined in NATO as the ability of the forces of two or more nations to train, exercise and operate effectively together in

7104-538: The introduction of computer science-related courses in K-12 education . Ideas of computer science were first mentioned before the 1950s under the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University , where they had discussed and began thinking of computer circuits and numerical calculations. As time went on, the field of information technology and computer science became more complex and

7200-452: The issue of search interoperability related to web resources. Such standards also address broader topics of interoperability, such as allowing data mining. With respect to software , the term interoperability is used to describe the capability of different programs to exchange data via a common set of exchange formats, to read and write the same file formats , and to use the same communication protocols . The lack of interoperability can be

7296-438: The language uses a different writing system it is almost impossible if no translation tools are available. Interoperability is used by researchers in the context of urban flood risk management .  Cities and urban areas worldwide are expanding, which creates complex spaces with many interactions between the environment, infrastructure and people.  To address this complexity and manage water in urban areas appropriately,

7392-469: The legal clean-room PC BIOS designs of Compaq and Columbia Data Products , happened before Phoenix announced, in July 1984, that they were licensing their own BIOS code. Phoenix expressly emphasized the clean-room process through which their BIOS code had been written by a programmer who did not even have prior exposure to Intel microprocessors, himself having been a TMS9900 programmer beforehand. As late as

7488-584: The lives of emergency personnel and the citizens they serve. The U.S. government is making an effort to overcome the nation's lack of public safety interoperability. The Department of Homeland Security's Office for Interoperability and Compatibility (OIC) is pursuing the SAFECOM and CADIP and Project 25 programs, which are designed to help agencies as they integrate their CAD and other IT systems. The OIC launched CADIP in August 2007. This project will partner

7584-443: The operational and tactical levels in terms of enhancing flexibility. Because first responders need to be able to communicate during wide-scale emergencies, interoperability is an important issue for law enforcement , fire fighting , emergency medical services , and other public health and safety departments. It has been a major area of investment and research over the last 12 years. Widely disparate and incompatible hardware impedes

7680-430: The original vendor, who may well see the new vendor as a potential competitor and threat. The newer implementations often rely on clean-room reverse engineering in the absence of technical data to achieve interoperability. The original vendors may provide such technical data to others, often in the name of encouraging competition , but such data is invariably encumbered, and may be of limited use. Availability of such data

7776-441: The product and, in the appropriate case, once for the patent-protected program the product uses. Interoperability is often more of an organizational issue. Interoperability can have a significant impact on the organizations concerned, raising issues of ownership (do people want to share their data? or are they dealing with information silos ?), labor relations (are people prepared to undergo training?) and usability. In this context,

7872-485: The result may well be monopoly or market failure . For this reason, it may be prudent for user communities or governments to take steps to encourage interoperability in various situations. At least 30 international bodies and countries have implemented eGovernment -based interoperability framework initiatives called e-GIF while in the US there is the NIEM initiative. The need for plug-and-play interoperability –

7968-456: The rights to Virtual Game Station to prevent its further sale and development. This established a precedent addressing the legal implications of commercial reverse engineering efforts. During production, Connectix unsuccessfully attempted a Chinese wall approach to reverse engineer the BIOS, so its engineers disassembled the object code directly. Connectix's successful appeal maintained that

8064-417: The same ASCII or a Unicode format in all the communicating systems. Beyond the ability of two or more computer systems to exchange information, semantic interoperability is the ability to automatically interpret the information exchanged meaningfully and accurately in order to produce useful results as defined by the end users of both systems. To achieve semantic interoperability, both sides must refer to

8160-447: The same product. Interoperability may be developed post-facto , as a special measure between two products, while excluding the rest, by using open standards . When a vendor is forced to adapt its system to a dominant system that is not based on open standards, it is compatibility , not interoperability. Open standards rely on a broadly consultative and inclusive group including representatives from vendors, academics and others holding

8256-503: The storage and processing technologies employed, it is possible to distinguish four distinct phases of IT development: pre-mechanical (3000 BC — 1450 AD), mechanical (1450 — 1840), electromechanical (1840 — 1940), and electronic (1940 to present). Information technology is a branch of computer science , defined as the study of procedures, structures, and the processing of various types of data. As this field continues to evolve globally, its priority and importance have grown, leading to

8352-417: The system of regular (paper) mail, borrowing both terms (mail, letter, envelope, attachment, box, delivery, and others) and characteristic features — ease of use, message transmission delays, sufficient reliability and at the same time no guarantee of delivery. The advantages of e-mail are: easily perceived and remembered by a person addresses of the form user_name@domain_name (for example, somebody@example.com);

8448-406: The term can be defined as: In two-way radio , interoperability is composed of three dimensions: Many organizations are dedicated to interoperability. Some concentrate on eGovernment, eBusiness or data exchange in general. Internationally, Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium facilitates global interoperability across borders, language and technical barriers. In the built environment,

8544-405: The world's storage capacity per capita required roughly 40 months to double (every 3 years); and per capita broadcast information has doubled every 12.3 years. Massive amounts of data are stored worldwide every day, but unless it can be analyzed and presented effectively it essentially resides in what have been called data tombs: "data archives that are seldom visited". To address that issue,

8640-403: The worldwide capacity to store information on electronic devices grew from less than 3  exabytes in 1986 to 295 exabytes in 2007, doubling roughly every 3 years. Database Management Systems (DMS) emerged in the 1960s to address the problem of storing and retrieving large amounts of data accurately and quickly. An early such system was IBM 's Information Management System (IMS), which

8736-399: Was a 1999 lawsuit which established an important precedent in regard to reverse engineering. Sony sought damages for copyright infringement over Connectix 's Virtual Game Station emulator, alleging that its proprietary BIOS code had been copied into Connectix's product without permission. Sony won the initial judgment, but the ruling was overturned on appeal. Sony eventually purchased

8832-503: Was able to handle the processing of more data. Scholarly articles began to be published from different organizations. Looking at early computing, Alan Turing , J. Presper Eckert , and John Mauchly were considered some of the major pioneers of computer technology in the mid-1900s. Giving them such credit for their developments, most of their efforts were focused on designing the first digital computer. Along with that, topics such as artificial intelligence began to be brought up as Turing

8928-702: Was able to protect its dominant market position for work group server operating systems, the heart of corporate IT networks. Microsoft was ordered to disclose complete and accurate interface documentation, which could enable rival vendors to compete on an equal footing ( the interoperability remedy ). Interoperability has also surfaced in the software patent debate in the European Parliament (June–July 2005). Critics claim that because patents on techniques required for interoperability are kept under RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) conditions, customers will have to pay license fees twice: once for

9024-496: Was beginning to question such technology of the time period. Devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, probably initially in the form of a tally stick . The Antikythera mechanism , dating from about the beginning of the first century BC, is generally considered the earliest known mechanical analog computer , and the earliest known geared mechanism. Comparable geared devices did not emerge in Europe until

9120-529: Was established in 2006, as a consortium of European National Land Registers. The aim of the service is to establish a single portal through which customers are provided with access to information about individual properties, about land and property registration services, and about the associated legal environment. The European Interoperability Framework (EIF) considered four kinds of interoperability: legal interoperability, organizational interoperability, semantic interoperability, and technical interoperability. In

9216-468: Was the Manchester Baby , which ran its first program on 21 June 1948. The development of transistors in the late 1940s at Bell Laboratories allowed a new generation of computers to be designed with greatly reduced power consumption. The first commercially available stored-program computer, the Ferranti Mark I , contained 4050 valves and had a power consumption of 25 kilowatts. By comparison,

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