Integrating e-commerce standards and initiatives in a multi-layered ontology

The proliferation of different standards and joint initiatives for the classification of products and services (UNSPSC, e-cl@ss, RosettaNet, NAICS, SCTG, etc.) reveals that B2B markets have not reached a consensus on the coding systems, on the level of detail of their descriptions, on their granularity, etc. This paper shows how these standards and initiatives, which are built to cover different needs and functionalities, can be integrated in an ontology using a common multi-layered knowledge architecture. This multi-layered ontology will provide a shared understanding of the domain for applications of e-commerce, allowing the information sharing between heterogeneous systems. We will present a method for designing ontologies from these information sources by automatically transforming, integrating and enriching the existing vocabularies with the WebODE platform. As an illustration, we show an example on the computer domain, presenting the relationships between UNSPSC, e-cl@ss, RosettaNet and an electronic catalogue from an e-commerce platform

Improving Document Exchanges in the Supply Chain

Abstract. In order to help businesses to communicate fruitfully, we present a solution based on ontology alignment for integrating business documents. We focus on detecting and resolving semantic conflicts encountered during the integration process due to different terminologies used in xCBL, cXML and RosettaNet. Our contribution is to benefit from research in the ontology alignment area and considered as empirical study to test if alignment solution can overcome the heterogeneity problems between business systems. As case study, we apply alignment on purchase order ontologies, a common task of the supply chain

L'ingénierie des documents d'affaires dans le cadre du web sémantique

Dans cette thèse, nous présentons les problèmes d’échange de documents d'affaires et proposons une méthode pour y remédier. Nous proposons une méthodologie pour adapter les standards d’affaires basés sur XML aux technologies du Web sémantique en utilisant la transformation des documents définis en DTD ou XML Schema vers une représentation ontologique en OWL 2. Ensuite, nous proposons une approche basée sur l'analyse formelle de concept pour regrouper les classes de l'ontologie partageant une certaine sémantique dans le but d'améliorer la qualité, la lisibilité et la représentation de l'ontologie. Enfin, nous proposons l’alignement d'ontologies pour déterminer les liens sémantiques entre les ontologies d'affaires hétérogènes générés par le processus de transformation pour aider les entreprises à communiquer fructueusement.In this thesis, we present the problems of business document exchanges. We propose a methodology to adapt the XML-based business standards for the Semantic Web technologies by mapping documents defined on DTD or XML Schema to an ontological representation in OWL 2. Next, we propose an approach based on formal concept analysis techniques to regroup the ontology classes sharing some semantics to improve the quality, readability and the representation of the ontology. Finally, we propose ontology alignment to determine the semantic links between heterogeneous business ontologies generated by the transformation process to help entreprises to communicate fruitfully

Building and Evaluating a SOA-Based Model for Purchase Order Management in E-Commerce System

E-Commerce systems are characterized by complex Web applications that use different operating systems and different technologies. One of the most popular E-Commerce applications is conducted between businesses (B2B) and between a business and a consumer (B2C) is Purchase Order Management. It consists of components such as Sales, Shipping and Billing. In many cases nowadays Purchase Order Management components use integration approaches that lack interoperability and manageability resulting in customer dissatisfaction, time consumption and excessive costs. In this research, we build a model to overcome shortcomings of current Purchase Order Management system. The model is based on the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) principles, Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), and Web services. They offer many advantages and help achieve the goals of interoperability and manageability. The proposed model is evaluated by using a scenario based software architecture method and proves that it achieves the quality attributes set as goals for the model which are interoperability and manageability. A case study of the model is implemented as a prove-of-concept. A specific usage scenario for the model is discussed and further proves that the model accomplishes its functionality and quality attributes

Web Services-Enhanced Agile Modeling and Integrating Business Processes

In a global business context with continuous changes, the enterprises have to enhance their operational efficiency, to react more quickly, to ensure the flexibility of their business processes, and to build new collaboration pathways with external partners. To achieve this goal, they must use e-business methods, mechanisms and techniques while capitalizing on the potential of new information and communication technologies. In this context, we propose a standards, model and Web services-based approach for modeling and integrating agile enterprise business processes. The purpose is to benefit from Web services characteristics to enhance the processes design and realize their dynamic integration. The choice of focusing on Web services is essentially justified by their broad adoption by enterprises as well as their capability to warranty interoperability between both intra and inter-enterprises systems. Thereby, we propose in this chapter a metamodel for describing business processes, and discuss their dynamic integration by addressing the Web services discovery issue. On the one hand, the proposed metamodel is in line with the W3C Web services standards, namely, WSDL, SAWSDL and WS-Policy. It considers the use of BPMN standard to describe the behavioral aspect of business processes and completes their design using UML diagrams describing their functional, non-functional and semantic aspects. On other hand, our approach for integrating processes is in line with BPEL standard recommended to orchestrate Web services. To realize executable business processes, this approach recommends the use of semantic matching and selection mechanisms in order to produce agile systems.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figures, Book chapte

International Workshop "What can FCA do for Artificial Intelligence?" (FCA4AI at IJCAI 2013, Beijing, China, August 4 2013)

International audienceThis second edition of the FCA4AI workshop (the first edition was associated to the ECAI 2012 Conference, see http://www.fca4ai.hse.ru/), shows again that there are many AI researchers interested in FCA. Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) is a mathematically well-founded theory aimed at data analysis and classification. FCA allows one to build a concept lattice and a system of dependencies (implications) which can be used for many AI needs, e.g. knowledge processing involving learning, knowledge discovery, knowledge representation and reasoning, ontology engineering, as well as information retrieval and text processing. Thus, there exist many natural links between FCA and AI. Accordingly, the focus in this workshop was on how can FCA support AI activities (knowledge processing) and how can FCA be extended in order to help AI researchers to solve new and complex problems in their domains

Collaborative Product Representation for Emergent Electronic Marketplace

Griffith Sciences, School of Information and Communication TechnologyNo Full Tex