i202 Fall 2009 School of Information, UC Berkeley

14 October 2009

In this lecture we look at the vocabulary problem we discussed in Lecture 7 as it manifests itself in enterprise contexts.   Within a firm, different information systems might use data models that are incomplete or incompatible with respect to each other, and between firms these differences can be even greater.  Structural, syntactic, and semantic mismatches cause problems when processes and services attempt to span these system and organizational boundaries (for example, to create a complete model of a "customer" or to conduct a business transaction).   We'll consider how technical standards and transformation techniques can help achieve integration and interoperability, but we'll acknowledge that interoperability is not always possible and that non-technical factors play a huge role in determining the approach.