Interoperability

A System-of-Systems (SoS) is defined as: A configuration of systems in which component systems can be added/removed during use; each provides useful services in its own right; and each is managed for those services. Yet, together they exhibit a synergistic, transcendent capability

SoS is built from a collection of independently acquired and operating systems that must be connected. These systems that may have been developed during different timeframes, from different sources, and from differing organizations or missions. Interoperability standards are the primary mechanism to enable effective connection of the parts. A carefully crafted definition of the protocol is a better means for a long-lived approach towards establishing interoperability than adherence to a specific product...

A Web Service is a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. Web services encompass many different systems, but generally refers to clients and servers that communicate. Web services are components of Service-oriented architecture (SOA), where the basic unit of communication is a message. Loose coupling of services into workflows and applications is facilitated by the "contract" that WSDL provides, rather than the underlying implementation details.

In RESTful Web services constrain the interface to a simple set standard operations (e.g., GET, PUT, DELETE). Here, the focus is on interacting with stateful resources, rather than messages or operations. RESTful Web services can use WSDL to describe SOAP messaging over HTTP, which defines the operations, or can be implemented as an abstraction purely on top of SOAP (e.g., WS-Transfer).

Function: Data Inputs: Data Outputs: Operation: Code: