Implementing a Categorical Information System
AMAST 2008 Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Algebraic Methodology and Software Technology
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At ICSM01 Johnson and Rosebrugh proposed a newmethodology, based on formal specification techniques andpartial reverse engineering, for developing interoperationsamong legacy information systems. The present brief paperreports on progress to date in designing such interoperationsfor major health informatics information systems. Wedescribe briefly the methodology, argue for the value of partialreverse engineering and the benefits of the formal specificationapproach (based on category theory) that we use,and evaluate the methodology in two case studies. The mainnew result is the following. The ICSM01 paper correctlypredicted that what was called there "full-duplex interoperation"would often provide more interoperability than is infact required. We have discovered that the provision of full-duplexinteroperability is indeed usually unnecessary, and itis costly because of the need to modify the legacy system. Weproposed the development of "half-duplex interoperation"to avoid these costs, and we have since developed the half-duplextechniques. Nevertheless, the half-duplex techniquescan still require some legacy system modification. Followingrecent work on partial information, we are developingan extension to the view based interoperation technique thatavoids legacy system modification in over 92% of the caseswe have investigated.