Cases on Semantic Interoperability for Information Systems Integration: Practices and Applications

Powerful and complex information systems have evolved over the past half century that are finely tuned to particular cultural and geographical contexts. Now that globalized business is battering down such obstructive dikes, it requires those systems to be integrated into a universal whole. Translating syntactically--moving an element from a place in one system to an analogous place in another system--is pretty easy. The hard part, the part addressed here, is to translate the meaning--to make sure that a transaction in one country is the same transaction in all countries. Researchers in information and computer sciences look at novel concepts for engineering semantic interoperability solutions, and domain-specific semantic interoperability practices. Among their specific topics are the ontological stance for a manufacturing scenario, streamlining semantic integration systems, semantic synchronization in business-to-business transactions, and data integration in the geospatial semantic web. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)