Chapter 20. Standards: Necessary but Not Sufficient

Although standards are instrumental in promoting interoperability, many standards do not guarantee it in a multivendor environment. Our purpose in this chapter is to explain the role of standards and to discuss the importance of additional activities such as profiling of standards and multivendor interoperability testing. This is followed by specific examples of industry- and government-sponsored interoperability initiatives.

The Role of Standards, Profiles, and Interoperability Testing

It has been said that a camel is actually a horse designed by committee. Although this may seem a bit disparaging to some, we invoke this anecdote to illustrate the difficulties typically encountered when attempting ...

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