CIMOSA News, Vol. 11/3

Particular topics like performance indicators on project performance, involvement of PhD students, gender issues and cooperation with other projects and initiatives have been reviewed. Major dissemination activities comprised 1) participation at the eChallenges Conference with a demonstration stand and a session on Interoperability with presenters from the European initiatives INTEROP and ATHENA and the US, 2) a Dissemination Workshop at the OTM Conference in Cyprus, with five presentations of topics of the three INTEROP domains and 3) a Networking session on interoperability at the IST’2004 conference organised by ATHENA and INTEROP (see also below). In addition, mechanisms for self sustaining the network of Excellence following the funding period have been discussed (www.interop-noe.org).

ICEIMT’04 4^th International Conference on Enterprise Integration and Modeling Technologies held together with the workshop on Design of Information Infrastructure Systems for Manufacturing (DIISM) at the University of Toronto, Canada, 2004-10-9/11. The conference was attended by about 60 people from around the world. A total of 33 papers covered enterprise architectures, models, languages, ontologies, human systems, standardisation and different applications in the area of enterprise integration. The papers addressed Standardization for enterprise integration and interoperability, Enterprise Integration relating to enterprise frameworks, architectures, models and modelling languages, Aspects of Human Systems, Ontology and different Applications in the area of enterprise integration. http://www.eil.utoronto.ca/

eChallenges, the14^th EU conference on eBusiness, eGovernment, eWork, eLearning, eEurope, others, held in Vienna, Austria, 2004-10-27/29 provided an extensive overview on the European R&D work in ICT. 265 papers and case studies have been presented in over 70 session to about 600 participants. Seven sessions on eBusiness were concerned with interoperability, processes, trust and confidence and with general and commercialisation issues. Interoperability has been the subject in eGovernment and in a special workshop on European/US perspectives on interoperability. More than 70 exhibition stands showed results of research work in ICT technologies and products.

IST’2004 EU conference on Information Society Technology held in The Hague, the Netherlands, 2004-11-15/17. The conference was attended by almost 3000 people from around the world. With a total of about 180 contributions made in 30 parallel sessions the conference program was very future and society oriented providing a comprehensive view on the ongoing European work in IST as well as presenting visions on future research in a number of areas.

Sessions most relevant to our area: ‘Enterprises of the future’ with items on collaborative networks, electronic market and eLogistics. ‘Knowledge management’ focused on humans as the knowledge owner. Enterprise Networking Session ‘Shaping the Future of Interoperability: An Open Invitation to participate in forthcoming Initiatives’ organised by the ATHENA and INTEROP initiatives.

Results of European research projects have been displayed in the accompanying exhibition with about 90 exhibits covering four main areas: Ways of working in the knowledge economy; How can people be integrated and protected in the knowledge economy? Tools for Ambient Intelligence; and Communication and Amusement.

ISO TC 184 SC5/WG1 Modelling and Architectures, Toronto, 2004-10-12/14 on Standards for Enterprise Integration and Interoperability. The meeting was attended by 12 people representing 8 countries: Australia, China, Germany, France, Japan, Mexico, UK, USA. Several project members reported on the EU initiatives ATHENA and INTEROP. Special emphasis in both initiatives is on dissemination to standardisation bodies. Interoperability, the new work item of WG1 has been discussed extensively starting with the multiple definitions of the term. Another discussion was on the term Object View, which provides confusion with the term model view. Object role a term proposed by the ATHENA project may be a solution. ISO 15704 has been amended with two new annexes: economic and decisional view. Next WG1 meeting in Frankfurt, 2005-04-21/23.

CEN TC 310 WG 1 Modelling and Architectures, next meeting in Paris 2004-12-13/15

IEC/SC 65A-ISO/TC 184/SC 5/JWG 15, Next JWG15 meeting: 2004-11-17/19 at NEMA in Washington DC, USA.

Publication Reviews

Reviews

R.A. Stegwee and B.D. Rukanova, Identification of different types of standards for domain-specific interoperability. Using the concept of communication, the paper explores the capabilities of available standards in the area of communication in a specific domain. The authors propose a categorisation of standards into four different categories: methods, meta-models, concrete models and operational standards. Only operational standards provide solutions applicable across domains through their capability to describe the interface (syntax), the items to be communicated or exchanged (semantic) as well as when to communicate them and what to expect back in return (pragmatic). The ability to interoperate is analysed in the terms of the two requirements: a) the exchange between systems or components and b) the use of the exchanged information.

Domain components which interoperate in applications are humans, processes and technology leading to six different types of communication (e.g. human to human, human to process, human to technology). Three types of organizational interoperability have been identified: 1) interconnectivity – ability to exchange information at a network, syntactical level: 2) interchangeability – ability to use information at a presentation, semantic level and 3) interoperability – ability to use information at an application, pragmatic level. A framework identifies types of standards for the types of organizational interoperability. For more information: r.a.stegwee@utwente.nl, b.d.rukanova@utwente.nl, available on line at: http://www.si.umich.edu/misq-stds/proceedings/

Papers presented

Kosanke, K., Standards in Enterprise Inter- and Intra-Organisational Integration, presented at ICEIMT’04, Toronto, 2004-10-09/11
Chen, D, Knothe, T., Zelm, M., ATHENA Integrated Project and the Mapping to International Standard ISO 15704, ICEMT’04, Toronto, 2004-10-09/12

INTEROP ESA’05 Conference, 2005-02-23/25 in Geneva, Switzerland, http://interop-esa05.unige.ch
10^th EURAS Workshop on ‘Standardisation in an Enlarged Europe’ 2005-06-2/3, Tallinn, Estonia, http://www.EURAS.org
CAISE*05 Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering,, Porto, Portugal, 2005-06-13/17, http://www.fe.up.pt/caise2005
16^th IFAC World Congress, Prague, 2005-07-4/8 http://ifacplaza.certicon.cz/index.php
CE2005: 12^th ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering: Research and Applications, Ft. Worth/Dallas, USA, 2005-07-25/29, http://www.ce2005.org/cfp1.html
EDOC’2005, Ninth International IEEE EDOC Conference, Enschede, NL, 2005-09-19/23, http://www.edocconference.org

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