Interoperability and Semantics - a reoccurring Issue?

Interoperability is a qualitative property of computing infrastructures that denotes the ability of the sending and receiving systems to exchange and properly interpret information objects across system boundaries. Since this property is not given by default, the interoperability problem and the representation of semantics have been an active research topic for approximately four decades. Early database models such as the Relational Model used schemas to express semantics and implicitly aimed at achieving interoperability by providing programming independence of data storage and access. After a number of intermediate steps such as Object Oriented Data Bases and Semi - Structured Data such as hypertext and XML document models, the notions of semantics and interoperability became what they have been over the last ten years in the context of the World Wide Web and more recently the concept of Open Linked Data. With this talk we investigate semantics and interoperability research from the point of view of information systems. It should give an overview of existing old and new interoperability techniques and point out future research directions, especially for concepts found in Open Linked Data and the Semantic WEB.