Transferring the principle of loose coupling to the semantic level

In this paper, we present a conceptual approach that transfers the well established principle of loose coupling from the functional level to the semantic level of information models. Key characteristics of loose coupling in systems engineering are identified, in order to map them to the challenge of achieving semantic interoperability between heterogeneous information models in distributed service-oriented environments. A specification of loosely coupled information models is provided and its instantiation by means of ontology-based approaches is discussed.