Incremental Interoperability and an Industrial Revolution: Why Data Interoperability Fails, and How We Can Do Better

Arnon Rosenthal
The Mitre Corporation

January 26, 2001
11 a.m.
Fuller Labs 320

Abstract (Arnon Rosenthal, Frank Manola, Scott Renner also)

Many initiatives, governmental and commercial, have pursued the grand vision of "transparent access" - making all data available to all consumers (users and applications), in a way the consumer can interpret, anywhere and at any time. Among large-scale enterprises, success stories in achieving such visions seem rare or nonexistent. Instead of leading one more charge "over the top", we suggest that a better guiding metaphor would be "continual evolution of a partially satisfactory system". This resembles what we have today, and what we will have in 2010.

We first examine fallacies that need to be corrected if there is to be a hope of success. We then outline an "industrial revolution" that partitions work into simpler, one-skill pieces. Many pieces will be automatable; others could be done by software-naive end users; all produce reusable knowledge. We identify first steps that may offer some immediate benefits, give crucial stakeholders (metadata providers) incentives to participate, and yet fit a long term vision of greatly increased access. We also describe open research problems in data administration and query brokering.

Host

Professor Elke Rundensteiner

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