Building the DAML Electronic Commerce Domain David E. Anyiwo Bowie State University

2 Motivation The inability of most Web applications to communicate and meaningfully share relevant information has severely constrained business-to-business (B2B) and other types of electronic commerce. Web-based business information is largely characterized by low intelligence density. Consequently, most businesses incur staggering logistical costs and productivity losses in their e-business transactions.

3 Motivation (contd) A recent study by SAIC found that up to 40% of product design time in the missile industry was spent searching for relevant information, such as, design data, part specifications, production plans, models, simulations, price quotes, and schedule estimates. According to the study, about 50% of the development and production time and cost of most large-scale system projects lie in the supply chain below the prime contractor level. There is a growing need to transition evolving DAML tools to enhance electronic commerce.

4 The DAML EC Domain Build a business-oriented ontology domain on the DAML infrastructure to support business- to-business electronic commerce. The DAML EC Gateway facilitates the discovery and distribution of rich semantic descriptions of commercial products and services, front- and back-office applications, expertise and provides other portal services. Subsequent versions of the DAML EC Gateway will support business-to-customer and other electronic commerce models.

5 Ongoing Activities Identify and structure common e-commerce marketplace value propositions. Organize and involve various user groups in the creation of clearinghouses from which computer and other industry DTDs can be sourced. Build and maintain libraries of rich, cross- enterprise ontology assets.

6 Ongoing Activities (contd) Plan a workshop to establish the baseline for developing a common, dynamically extensible ontology base for the computer manufacturing industry. Construct relevant industry value chain and other business-to-business e-commerce models.

7 Challenges Coordination of collaborative efforts within the DAML Program Promotion of DAML/DAML-S tools for broad- based application in the e-commerce marketplace. Facilitation of interconnectivity coordination among e-business solution providers.