Harmonise: A solution for data interoperability

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 I global distribution systems - 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 value 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. © 2003 by Springer Science+Business Media New York.