Interoperability Requirements

Definition

An interoperability requirement is a user-oriented quality requirement that specifies a required amount of interoperability, which is a quality factor that is defined as follows:

Interoperability

the degree to which something is connected to and operates with others.

Objectives

The typical objectives of a interoperability requirement are to:

• Ensure the application or component interoperates with other specified applications and components:
  • Can pass necessary data to the other applications and components.
  • Can receive necessary data from the other applications and components.
  • Can use the data it receives.
  • Can request the public services of the other applications and components.
  • Can have its public services requested by the other applications and components.
• Minimize integration defects.

Measurements

Interoperability requirements are typically specified in terms of the following measurements:

• TBD.

Examples

The following are typical examples of interoperability requirements:

• “The application shall properly interoperate with the legacy Customer Oracle database.”
• “The application shall properly interoperate with the existing Warehouse Management application.”
• “The application shall properly interoperate with existing barcode readers.”
• “The application shall properly interoperate with IBM’s WebSphere application server.”

Guidelines

The following guidelines have been found to be useful when producing interoperability requirements:

• The scope of an interoperability requirement is typically:
  • An application
  • A component
  but may also include:
  • A business enterprise
  • A center
• Interoperability includes successful integration with external:
  • System and software applications.
  • Data, hardware, software, and subsystem components.
• Interoperability does not mean integration with “wetware” (personnel) components, which is covered under usability.
• Successful integration means that the application can successfully communicate with the other applications and components to exchange data, make requests, and raise exceptions.
• Interoperability can be specified as:
  • Complete interoperability.
  • Partial interoperability in terms of a specified subset of the interface.
  • A maximum amount of effort required to modify an existing application to interface with the specified external (although this is really more of a developer-oriented requirement than a user-oriented requirement).