Remote system interfaces: An approach to overcoming the heterogeneity barrier and retaining local autonomy in the integration of heterogeneous systems

Existing and legacy software systems are the product of lengthy and individual developmental histories. Interoperability among such systems offers the support of global applications on these systems and intelligent information processing. However, interoperability among these heterogeneous systems is hampered by the absence of an integrated environment that would allow the development of global applications requiring intersystem cooperation. A uniform application-system interface is necessary to abstract the common properties of the global applications and of systems, mask their differences, and thus overcome this heterogeneity barrier. This paper presents such a solution, termed Remote System Interfaces (RSIs), which has been designed and implemented in the course of the InterBase project at Purdue University.