Travel and tourism represents the leading application in b2c e-commerce, due to several reasons: tourism is an information business, it has a rather a long value chain, and since the 60s it represents a classical field of IT and network applications (i.e., computerized reservation systems / global distribution system - CRS/GDS). Thus, this sector depends heavily on advanced Information Technologies solutions, and the characteristics of this marketplace lead to a crucial challenge: the strong need for interoperability between different information systems, allowing the flow of information in this complex valute process. Data heterogeneity is a well known problem and the existing practical approach to solve this problem is to write ad-hoc data interface programs for each pair of communicating systems. Experience shows that development and maintenance of these programs are expensive in terms of both time and money. This paper presents an alternative solution to the interoperability problem in the travel /tourism marketplace: the creation of a "harmonisation space" in which market players are enabled to exchange data without changing their own systems' schemata
HARMONISE: a Solution for Data Interoperability
Dell'Erba, Mirella;Fodor, Oliver;Ricci, Francesco;Werthner, Hannes
2002-01-01
Abstract
Travel and tourism represents the leading application in b2c e-commerce, due to several reasons: tourism is an information business, it has a rather a long value chain, and since the 60s it represents a classical field of IT and network applications (i.e., computerized reservation systems / global distribution system - CRS/GDS). Thus, this sector depends heavily on advanced Information Technologies solutions, and the characteristics of this marketplace lead to a crucial challenge: the strong need for interoperability between different information systems, allowing the flow of information in this complex valute process. Data heterogeneity is a well known problem and the existing practical approach to solve this problem is to write ad-hoc data interface programs for each pair of communicating systems. Experience shows that development and maintenance of these programs are expensive in terms of both time and money. This paper presents an alternative solution to the interoperability problem in the travel /tourism marketplace: the creation of a "harmonisation space" in which market players are enabled to exchange data without changing their own systems' schemataI documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
