Adaptive Information Improving Business Through Semantic Interoperability, Grid Computing, and Enterprise Integration

Chapter 8. Multimodal Interoperability Architecture

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• New adaptive infrastructure approaches are at hand today.

• Multiple "modes" of semantic solutions are required for enterprise problems.

• Multiple enabling technologies are required for adaptive/dynamic architectures.

• The complexity of enterprise infrastructures is not solved with simple solutions.

• The benefits of a semantic interoperability architecture are significant and tangible.

Why confound an already obtuse phrase like "semantic interoperability architecture" with a word like "multimodal"? Because it accurately describes the best overall solution approach. Semantic technologies, as we have seen in previous chapters, are wide and varied. They operate at different architectural layers and provide differing reasoning services. This complexity is the natural state of things. Semantic solutions for interoperability, and the architectures we must use to describe them, apply to different modes of operation, different service interfaces, different technologies, and different function points—thus requiring a multimodal solution.

A useful analogy is in software security technology. Although many architects are tempted to draw a box on a diagram and label it "security," anybody who's ever truly built a large E-commerce system knows that security is not just one thing—it has to be accounted for at every layer. Security touch points like network, data, application, and functions like authorization, authentication, realm protection, ...