Towards Pragmatic Interoperability in the New Enterprise - A Survey of Approaches

Pragmatic interoperability (PI) is the compatibility between the intended versus the actual effect of message exchange. This paper advances PI as a new research agenda within the gamut of enterprise interoperability research. PI is timely in today’s new enterprises as it is increasingly important that organizations are able to collectively add value to their products and services through effective collaboration. When enterprise systems exchange information, PI goes beyond the compatibility between the structure and the meaning of shared information. It also considers the use of information in a given context as an equally important aspect. As PI is a relatively new domain, this paper attempts to elucidate its notion by identifying and relating its key concepts from proposed definitions, and by reviewing extant approaches to identify critical knowledge gaps in PI research