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Accordingly, an '''Architecture of Interoperable Information Systems''' can be defined as the building plan of a cross-organizational information system, which enables organizations to execute a collaborative business process among them.
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Following the work on interoperable information systems conducted in European Research Projects (e.g. <ref>Interop NOE (2004 to 2007, project number IST-2004-508011), ATHENA (2004 to 2007, “Advanced Technologies for Interoperability of Heterogeneous Enterprise Networks and their Application”, project number IST-2004-507849) or R4eGov (2006 to 2009, project number IST-2004-026650)</ref>), in 2010 the Architecure of Interoperable Information Systems (AIOS) was published as a reference for the construction of loosely coupled, interoperating information systems and for the systematic, model-based enactment of collaborative business processes.
The AIOS originally aims at large organizations who want to interoperate with each other. To this aim it describes how internal information system elements can be systematically connected with the information systems of collaboration partners.
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Though the AIOS comprises all models needed for the enactment of collaborative business it focuses on '''design time''' aspects, e.g. the systematic development and configuration of interoperable information systems. The deployment of these models and the infrastructure to execute them are not described by AIOS. However, one '''run time''' component of the AIOS is a repository, in which each organization publishes the content of its [[Business Interoperability Interface]] (BII) to collaboration partners. Since it comprises external views on information system elements, it can support (runtime) publishing and discovery functionalities as needed in [[Service-oriented Architecture]]: In the BII, the externally relevant processes, services, organization structures etc. are described on various levels of technical granularity, enabling other organizations to search also for business-level concepts and not only for technical artifacts. Here, different from the traditional SOA approach, instead of one central service directory, various partner-specific repositories are implemented.
[[File:Architecture of Interoperable Information Systems.gif|thumb|right|Architecture of Interoperable Information Systems]]
The architecure builds on three orthogonal axes: Enterprise Dimensions, Levels of technical Granularity and Colloborative Views. The latter provides a public view on private information system elements. Thus, the architecture provides a comprehensive [[Business Interoperability Interface]], which describes the information system boundaries of one organization to its collaboration Partners and connects internal and external information systems.
To describe business processes comprehensively this axis provides distinct views on processes, functions, data, and organizational elements. In the organization dimension, roles, units and other organization elements relevant for the collaboration are described and related to internal elements. This ensures for example, that the collaboration partners have a common understanding of the interacting roles. In the data dimension, document types used in the collaboration are defined and related to internally used document types. In the function dimension, business functions and services offered in the collaboration are described. In the process dimension, the processes that each organization offers are described as well as how these public processes are related to adjacent processes of partner organizations.
Similar to private, public and global views as known from business process and workflow modeling, in the AIOS, corresponding private, public and global views on information system elements are provided. The public view acts as an interface to the internal, private system elements; it protects internal systems and enables interoperability without the need for a significant change to the internal systems. The global view can be used to correlate and connect the public views of different systems.
The description of system elements on different levels of technical granularity supports a systematic development of collaborative information systems, starting with the business requirements definition and going all the way down to the code level. Apart from the construction aspect, a multi-dimensional interoperability description is also provided; describing the interacting systems on different levels of technical granularity enables the synchronization of the collaborating systems on each level. Similar to for example [[Architecture of Integrated Information Systems|ARIS]] and OMG's [[Model-driven architecture|MDA]] three levels are used:
# Business Level: Here the processes to be automated are described from a technique independent level. In MDA this level is referred to as CIM level.
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