Interoperability: An Overview

Abstract This paper presents an overview on the interoperability, specially between sensors, actuators and fieldbus. The reasons for non interoperability are analyzed. Two main problems are studied : how to build interoperable equipments ot systems, and how to test, to verify, or to prove the interoperability. The methods, the solutions, or the approaches, to build or to verify the interoperability are described. After some definitions pulled out of the standards or of testing organisations, the global interoperability is decomposed into four partial ones, which are relevant of services, of protocols aspects including the coding (syntax and semantics) of data or exchanged objects, of resources necessary to manage the communication and the cooperation between application processes, and of temporal aspects in the behaviour of the communication and processes. Giving some examples of possible verification without puting all the equipments on a testing platform, we show the interest of the verification regarding the test approach.

[1]  Luciano Lenzini,et al.  Interoperability Tests on OSI Products in the Framework of the OSIRIDE-Intertest Initiative , 1992, Comput. Networks ISDN Syst..

[2]  Ousmane Koné.  Interconnexion de systèmes ouverts : test d'interopérabilité, test avec contraintes de temps physique , 1994 .

[3]  Ousmane Koné,et al.  Deriving Coordinated Testers for Interoperability , 1993, Protocol Test Systems.

[4]  H. Zimmermann,et al.  OSI Reference Model - The ISO Model of Architecture for Open Systems Interconnection , 1980, IEEE Transactions on Communications.

[5]  Samuel T. Chanson,et al.  On Ferry Clip Approaches in Protocol Testing , 1989, Comput. Networks.

[6]  Susan Symington,et al.  A COS study of OSI interoperability , 1990 .

[7]  Tommaso Bolognesi,et al.  Tableau methods to describe strong bisimilarity on LOTOS processes involving pure interleaving and enabling , 1994, FORTE.

[8]  Jean-Pierre Thomesse,et al.  Validation of timing properties for interoperability in distributed real-time applications , 1994, PSTV.

[9]  Jean-Pierre Thomesse,et al.  Interoperability of sensors and distributed systems , 1993 .

[10]  Frederic Weis.  Une approche pour l'integration d'applications mms , 1996 .

[11]  Mohand Lyazid Benkhellat.  Formalisation et vérification de l'interopérabilité dans les systèmes de communication. (Formalisation and verification of interoperability in communication systems) , 1995 .

[12]  Q. Rafiq,et al.  The Astride testing approach: principles, tools and carrying out , 1991 .

[13]  Marc F. Witteman,et al.  ATM Broadband Network Testing Using the Ferry Principle , 1993, Protocol Test Systems.

[14]  Terunao Soneoka,et al.  Combination of conformance and interoperability testing , 1992, FORTE.

[15]  Qin Li,et al.  New Advances in Ferry Testing Approaches , 1988, Comput. Networks.

[16]  J. Lecuivre,et al.  A framework for validating distributed real time applications by performance evaluation of communication profiles , 1995, Proceedings 1995 IEEE International Workshop on Factory Communication Systems. WFCS'95.