CIAS: Catalog of Interoperability Architectural Solutions for Software Systems

Context: Software systems have become increasingly large and complex, and are required in several critical domains, including Industry 4.0, the military, smart cities, and transportation. Consequently, the architectural design of these systems becomes considerably complicated, in addition to requiring interoperability among diverse systems that sometimes comprise them. Problem: Although many interoperability architectural solutions exist, software architects have struggled to comprehend, analyze, and select the most suitable ones to solve their problems. Objective: This work provides a catalog of the main interoperability architectural solutions (patterns, styles, tactics, and approaches) for addressing the four levels of interoperability (namely, technical, syntactic, semantic, and organizational) to resolve interoperability issues in software systems. Method: 65 studies found systematically in the scientific literature were deeply examined and provided evidence to define our catalog, which comprises interoperability issues and architectural solutions to address these problems. Results: As a contribution, this catalog could help software architects better decide which architectural solutions could solve each interoperability issue in their integration projects.