Systems Interoperability Types: A Tertiary Study

TL;DR

This paper provides an updated overview of software systems interoperability, analyzing 37 secondary studies to identify 36 types, 117 definitions, and 13 models, highlighting the shift from technical to social-technical challenges.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive panorama of interoperability types and models, clarifies current ambiguities, and discusses future research directions in a multidisciplinary context.

Findings

Identified 36 interoperability types with 117 definitions.

Revealed a shift from technical to social-technical interoperability issues.

Highlighted open challenges and research opportunities in the field.

Abstract

Interoperability has been a focus of attention over at least four decades, with the emergence of several interoperability types (or levels), diverse models, frameworks, and solutions, also as a result of a continuous effort from different domains. The current heterogeneity in technologies such as blockchain, IoT and new application domains such as Industry 4.0 brings not only new interaction possibilities but also challenges for interoperability. Moreover, confusion and ambiguity in the current understanding of interoperability types exist, hampering stakeholders' communication and decision making. This work presents an updated panorama of software-intensive systems interoperability with particular attention to its types. For this, we conducted a tertiary study that scrutinized 37 secondary studies published from 2012 to 2023, from which we found 36 interoperability types associated with 117 different definitions, besides 13 interoperability models and six frameworks in various domains. This panorama reveals that the concern with interoperability has migrated from technical to social-technical issues going beyond the software systems' boundary and still requiring solving many open issues. We also address the urgent actions and also potential research opportunities to leverage interoperability as a multidisciplinary research field to achieve low-coupled, cost-effective, and interoperable systems.