This is a collaboration environment for IDN team. The public portal on the IDN project is available at: the InterDataNet Official Site (http://www.interdatanet.org)

IDN architecture is designed to provide a basic contribution towards the design of a new application-independent middleware supporting distributed information management to enhance interoperation and collaboration between networked entities (organizations). To this extent a conceptual system model, named InterDataNet (IDN) is presented to define design characteristics of a middleware complying with collaboration goals and requirements to be translated in an infrastructural solution capable of enhancing support of collaborative telematic applications. The approach undertaken is aimed at structuring information, endowing it with proper metadata and handling information through a specific logical layered architecture. This allows us to provide a set of services to support information integration among heterogeneous sources and collaboration between entities, regardless of different original information internal models. The system name, InterDataNet (IDN), has the purpose to highlight the ultimate goal to allow interoperability among networks of data (also referred to as interdataworking). The IDN conceptual framework is composed of an Information Model (IDN-IM) and a Service Architecture (IDN-SA) as well as by the related implementation-specific Overlay Network (IDN-ON). While most of the state-of-the-art solutions for interdataworking envisage approaches developed for couple of interlocutors, thus increasing the problem complexity, IDN approach instead proposes itself to act as an application-independent “mediator” for interoperability, which could eventually prove itself to become a de-facto standard if a critical mass of adopters was reached. Some demonostrators are under development in specific application fields to provide more insight on IDN middleware design and concept validation.

Keywords: Information Model, Service Architecture, Overlay Network, InterDataWorking, information interoperability