[jsdwarf]

Funny you bring up logistics and (data) ontologies. I'm a PM at a logistics software company and I'd say the lack of proper ontologies and standardized data exchange formats is the biggest effort driver for integrating 3rd party carrier/delivery services such as DHL, Fedex etc.

It starts with the lack of a common terminology. For tool A a "booking" might be a reservation e.g. of a dock at a warehouse. For tool B the same word means a movement of goods between two accounts.

In terms of data integration things have gotten A LOT worse since EDIFACT is de facto deprecated. Every carrier in the parcel business is cooking their own API, but with insufficient means. I've come across things like Polish endpoint names/error messages or country organisations of big Parcel couriers using different APIs.

IMHO the EU has to step in here because integration costs skyrocket. They forced cellphone manufacturers to use USB-Cs for charging, why can't they force carriers to use a common API?

[openrisk]

The EU is doing its part in some domains. There is e.g., the eProcurement ontology [1] that aims to harmonize public procurement data flows. But I suppose it helped alot that (by EU law) everybody is obliged to submit to a central repository.

[1] https://docs.ted.europa.eu/epo-home/index.html