I always have taken the position that integration is something you do with things you control (i.e., inside your institutional scope boundary), while interoperability is what you do with things you don’t control – outside your institutional scope boundary. Of course, what constitutes your institutional scope boundary is itself not always clear, as organizational politics sometimes indicate. And sometimes persuasion and salesmanship can trump “command and control”.
As I have said previously, nothing productive happens without silos. Nobody has a blank check to take forever to do everything. Everything has a scope in time and resource/domain/institutional space – and that scope is usually not static, making everything a moving target for integration or interoperability. You can sometimes control things enough inside your institutional scope boundaries to approximate static targets for integration (the basis for all “enterprise integration” methodologies), but more often than not some environmental change throws this assumption into disarray.
Hans
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Eddy
Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 11:49 AM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Architectural considerations in Ontology Development
Patrick -
On Feb 17, 2013, at 10:17 AM, Patrick Cassidy wrote:
**But**, if you are
designing a top-level ontology that can integrate other **independently
developed** top-level ontologies
I would argue that for all intents & purposes, INTEGRATION is not possible.
The realistic goal should be INTEROPERABILITY rather than integration.
The silos are in place & they will not move. The only cost effective way forward is to learn how to get the silos to effectively talk to each other.
As explained to me by a highly skilled USNA, USMC, data modeler...
If you have a blank sheet of paper, have budget control & you're in COMMAND (not the same thing as control), then you can potentially have an integrated <something>.
In the real world, there is no such thing as a blank sheet of paper.. the greenfield days of [information] systems are in the distant past.
Just think... when someone walks into an Apple store to buy an iPhone & walks out in 15 minutes... do they feel the ground shake as those 40-50+ year-old AT&T/Verizon mainframe systems provision that 4oz handheld device?
Plus... I have noticed that when an outsider attempts to force unfamiliar language onto people who are already familiar with local jargon, it is extremely unlikely that the outsider/newcomer will win the day.
Classic example: KICKS vs CICS (that's an IBMer inside joke, likely to be totally opaque to non-IBMers)