Using XML for EDI

This paper examines XML and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) to see how XML can be used for EDI. The paper is concerned with the ability of XML to actually provides solutions to EDI's adoption barriers. An overview of XML's components and constraints is presented. Next, EDI is addressed, paying particular attention to its components and the barriers to EDI adoption. Finally, a discussion of how XML can be used for EDI occurs with focus also given to the impact of XML on EDI's adoption barriers. This paper concludes that if properly implemented, XML does offer solutions to EDI's problems. Sources include published literature, publicly accessible web pages, and standards body produced specifications

Distributed interoperable workflow support for electronic commerce.

Abstract. This paper describes a flexible distributed transactional workflow environment based on an extensible object-oriented framework built around class libraries, application programming interfaces, and shared services. The purpose of this environment is to support a range of EC-like business activities including the support of financial transactions and electronic contracts. This environment has as its aim to provide key infrastructure services for mediating and monitoring electronic commerce.

On Automated Message Processing in Electronic Commerce and Work Support Systems: Speech Act Theory and Expressive Felicity

Electronic messaging, whether in an office environment or for electronic commerce, is normally carried out in natural language, even when supported by information systems. For a variety of reasons, it would be useful if electronic messaging systems could have semantic access to, that is, access to the meanings and contents of, the messages they process. Given that natural language understanding is not a practicable alternative, there remain three approaches to delivering systems with semantic access: electronic data interchange (EDI), tagged messages, and the development of a formal language for business communication (FLBC). We favor the latter approach. In this article we compare and contrast these three approaches, present a theoretical basis for an FLBC (using speech act theory), and describe a prototype implementation

The Future of Enterprise Information Systems

[First paragraph] Enterprise information systems (EIS) have been important enablers of crossfunctional processes within businesses since the 1990s. Often referred to as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, they were extended in line with electronic businesses to integrate with suppliers as well as customers. Today, EIS architectures comprise not only ERP, supply chain, and customer relationship management systems, but also business intelligence and analytics. Recently, the move towards decentralized technologies has created new perspectives for EIS. Information systems (IS) research has already addressed opportunities and challenges of these developments quite well, but what will be the pressing opportunities and challenges for supporting enterprises with IS in the coming years? The remainder of this discussion focuses on the future of EIS from diverse but complementary perspectives

A Design Theory for Secure Semantic E-Business Processes (SSEBP)

This dissertation develops and evaluates a Design theory. We follow the design science approach (Hevener, et al., 2004) to answer the following research question: "How can we formulate a design theory to guide the analysis and design of Secure Semantic eBusiness processes (SSeBP)?" Goals of SSeBP design theory include (i) unambiguously represent information and knowledge resources involved in eBusiness processes to solve semantic conflicts and integrate heterogeneous information systems; (ii) analyze and model business processes that include access control mechanisms to prevent unauthorized access to resources; and (iii) facilitate the coordination of eBusiness process activities-resources by modeling their dependencies. Business processes modeling techniques such as Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) (BPMI, 2004) and UML Activity Diagrams (OMG, 2003) lack theoretical foundations and are difficult to verify for correctness and completeness (Soffer and Wand, 2007). Current literature on secure information systems design methods are theoretically underdeveloped and consider security as a non-functional requirement and as an afterthought (Siponen et al. 2006, Mouratidis et al., 2005). SSeBP design theory is one of the first attempts at providing theoretically grounded guidance to design richer secure eBusiness processes for secure and coordinated seamless knowledge exchange among business partners in a value chain. SSeBP design theory allows for the inclusion of non-repudiation mechanisms into the analysis and design of eBusiness processes which lays the foundations for auditing and compliance with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley. SSeBP design theory is evaluated through a rigorous multi-method evaluation approach including descriptive, observational, and experimental evaluation. First, SSeBP design theory is validated by modeling business processes of an industry standard named Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment (CPFR) approach. Our model enhances CPFR by incorporating security requirements in the process model, which is critically lacking in the current CPFR technical guidelines. Secondly, we model the demand forecasting and capacity planning business processes for two large organizations to evaluate the efficacy and utility of SSeBP design theory to capture the realistic requirements and complex nuances of real inter-organizational business processes. Finally, we empirically evaluate SSeBP, against enhanced Use Cases (Siponen et al., 2006) and UML activity diagrams, for informational equivalence (Larkin and Simon, 1987) and its utility in generating situational awareness (Endsley, 1995) of the security and coordination requirements of a business process. Specific contributions of this dissertation are to develop a design theory (SSeBP) that presents a novel and holistic approach that contributes to the IS knowledge base by filling an existing research gap in the area of design of information systems to support secure and coordinated business processes. The proposed design theory provides practitioners with the meta-design and the design process, including the system components and principles to guide the analysis and design of secure eBusiness processes that are secure and coordinated

Finding hidden semantics of text tables

Combining data from different sources for further automatic processing is often hindered by differences in the underlying semantics and representation. Therefore when linking information presented in documents in tabular form with data held in databases, it is important to determine as much information about the table and its content. Important information about the table data is often given in the text surrounding the table in that document. The table's creators cannot clarify all the semantics in the table itself therefore they use the table context or the text around it to give further information. These semantics are very useful when integrating and using this data, but are often difficult to detect automatically. We propose a solution to part of this problem based on a domain ontology. The input to our system is a document that contains tabular data and the system aims to find semantics in the document that are related to the tabular data. The output of our system is a set of detected semantics linked to the corresponding table. The system uses elements of semantic detection, semantic representation, and data integration. Semantic detection uses a domain ontology, in which we store concepts of that domain. This allows us to analyse the content of the document (text) and detect context information about the tables present in a document containing tabular data. Our approach consists of two components: (1) extract, from the domain ontology, concepts, synonyms, and relations that correspond to the table data. (2) Build a tree for the paragraphs and use this tree to detect the hidden semantics by searching for words matching the extracted concepts. Semantic representation techniques then allow representation of the detected semantics of the table data. Our system represents the detected semantics, as either 'semantic units' or 'enhanced metadata'. Semantic units are a flexible set of meta-attributes that describe the meaning of the data item along with the detected semantics. In addition, each semantic unit has a concept label associated with it that specifies the relationship between the unit and the real world aspects it describes. In the enhanced metadata, table metadata is enhanced with the semantics and representation context found in the text. Integrating data in our proposed system takes place in two steps. First, the semantic units are converted to a common context, reflecting the application. This is achieved by using appropriate conversion functions. Secondly, the semantically identical semantic units, will be identified and integrated into a common representation. This latter is the subject of future work. Thus the research has shown that semantics about a table are in the text and how it is possible to locate and use these semantics by transforming them into an appropriate form to enhance the basic table metadata