A translational solution to semantic-interoperability among expressive systems

The need to support the exchange of rich context-based information is increasingly gaining importance in today's arena of semantic-oriented, decision-support systems. Unlike data-oriented exchange, such semantic interoperability must venture beyond the! elementary communication of discrete data values and endeavor to translate between significantly more expressive representations. Further, support of this level of interoperability must avoid contamination of personalized perspective embedded within each collaborator's representation. The solution offered in this paper presents a service-based framework supporting an extensible set of translation paradigms to effectively connect expressive, ontology-based environments. Fundamental to this solution is the notion of remote service requests. Employing this metaphor as the basis for inter-system exchange allows each system within a universe of potentially diverse representations to be viewed as collections of available services. Further, by transparently marshalling such requests between client and service representations, the Interoperability Bridge offers each member of this multi-lingual reality the means to interoperate within the familiar confines of their native representations.