Interoperability is a property referring to the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together (inter-operate). The term is often used in a technical systems engineering sense, or alternatively in a broad sense, taking into account social, political, and organizational factors that impact system to system performance.

(Interop is also the name of several annual networking product trade shows.)

Definition

The IEEE defines interoperability as:

the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged.

Syntactic Interoperability

Syntactical Interoperability is required for any attempts of further interoperability. If a system is capable of communicating and exchanging data, it is syntactic interoperable. For communicating data, specified data formats, communication protocols, interfaces of descriptions and the like are fundamental. In general XML or SQL standards provide syntactic interoperability.

Semantic Interoperability

Data exchange involves two computer system parties at minimum: One sending and one receiving computer system part. The data exchange is done in order to produce useful results for either all or both computer system parts or at least one of them. However all users of the computer system parts agreed on the definition what is seen as useful result. Semantic interoperability is reached, than the data exchange between computer system parts is delivering after being processed such useful results.

Telecommunications

In telecommunication, the term can be defined as:

1. The ability of systems, units, or forces to provide services to and accept services from other systems, units or forces and to use the services exchanged to enable them to operate effectively together.
2. The condition achieved among communications-electronics systems or items of communications-electronics equipment when information or services can be exchanged directly and satisfactorily between them and/or their users. The degree of interoperability should be defined when referring to specific cases.

Source: from Federal Standard 1037C and from the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms in support of MIL-STD-188.

In two-way radio, interoperability is composed of three dimensions:

• compatible communications paths (compatible frequencies, equipment and signaling),
• radio system coverage or adequate signal strength, and;
• scalable capacity.

Software

According to ISO/IEC 2382-01, Information Technology Vocabulary, Fundamental Terms, interoperability is defined as follows: "The capability to communicate, execute programs, or transfer data among various functional units in a manner that requires the user to have little or no knowledge of the unique characteristics of those units". 1