Application of Ontology in Electronic Business Ching-Long Yeh Department of Computer Science and Engineering Tatung University

Ontology and EB2 Abstract EB standards provide the neutral basis of interoperability between trading partner Moving from procedural approach to declarative approach Representation of EB standards using the ontology technique Declarative approach to EB implementation

Electronic Commerce Evolution of electronic commerce –B2C, human-to-machine, online catalogue service –B2B, AP-to-AP, EB standards –RosettaNet 、 ebXML 、 BizTalk 。 Transport, routing, packaging Business processes, business documents Company ACompany B Transport, routing, packaging Business processes, business documents Backend AP

Ontology and EB4 General EB Architecture EB standard architecture is divided into –Upper level: Standard business processes and document –Lower level: Services for message transport, routing and packaging Popular standards –Horizontal integration: ebXML –Vertical integration: RosettaNet (Information Technology, Electronic Component and Semiconductor Manufacturing) –Messaging service: BizTalk Framework Transport, routing, packaging Business processes, business documents

Ontology and EB5 ebXML Technical Architecture

Ontology and EB6 ebXML Infrastructure EB infrastructure consists of 1.Trading partner’s information Collaboration Protocol Profile (CPP) and Collaboration Protocol Agreement (CPA ） 2.Business process and information meta model Business Process Schema Specification 3.Core component and core library functionality 4.Registry functionality 5.Messaging service functionality Common BP and vocabulary

Ontology and EB7 CPP Structure <CollaborationProtocolProfile xmlns=" xmlns:ds=" xmlns:xlink=" version="1.1"> text

Ontology and EB8 CPA Structure <CollaborationProtocolAgreement xmlns=" xmlns:bpm=" xmlns:ds = " xmlns:xlink = " cpaid="YoursAndMyCPA" version="1.2"> T18:39: T18:40:00 <ConversationConstraints invocationLimit = "100" concurrentConversations = "4"/> … … any combination of text and elements any text

1.Any Party may register its CPPs to an ebXML Registry. 2.Party B discovers trading partner A (Seller) by searching in the Registry and downloads CPP(A) to Party B’s server. 3.Party B creates CPA(A,B) and sends CPA(A,B) to Party A. 4.Parties A and B negotiate and store identical copies of the completed CPA as a document in both servers. This process is done manually or automatically. 5.Parties A and B configure their run-time systems with the information in the CPA. 6.Parties A and B do business under the new CPA. CPP(A) CPP(B) CPP(X) CPP(Y) CPP(Z) 1. CPA(A,B) (Document)(Exec. codet) CPA(A,B) (Document)(Exec. codet) Party A (Seller, Server) Party B (Buyer, Server) Registry Working Architecture of CPP/CPA

Ontology and EB10 Business Process Schema Concept

Ontology and EB11 Business Process Schema in XML

Ontology and EB12 Procedural Approach to EB Specifications –Not machine-readable –Need human interpretation Lack of partner discovery mechanism (registry, CPP, CPA) Example: RosettaNet

Ontology and EB13 Declarative Approach to EB Specifications –Machine-readable (Business Process, Document, and Vocabulary in either UML or XML) –Enabling automatic code generation Partner discovery mechanism (registry, CPP, CPA) Example: ebXML

Ontology and EB14 Ontology An ontology is a description (like a formal specification of a program) of the concepts and relationships that can exist for an agent or a community of agents. Ontology language: DAML –An extension to RDFS A specific schema of RDF for defining class, subclass, and property- value of resource

Ontology and EB15 RDF Resource Description Framework Statement –“Ora Lassila is the creator of the resource ” Structure –Resource (subject) –Property (predicate) –Value (object) "Ora Lassila” Ora Lassila Ora Lassila s:createdWith s:Creator

Ontology and EB16 RDFS The RDF Schema mechanism provides a basic type system for use in RDF models. –rdfs:Resource, rdfs:Class, rdfs:Literal –rdfs:subclassOf, rdfs:domain, rdfs:range –rdfs:label, rdfs:comment The RDF schema specification language is less expressive, but much simpler to implement, than full predicate calculus languages such as CycL and KIF. Basis of ontology language

Ontology and EB17 DARPA Agent Markup Language Program DARPA funded Research Program (also funded the Development of the ARPANNET -> Internet) Focusing on building the foundation for the Semantic Web: Ontology Language DAML+OIL: Result of a Joint (European + US-American) Committee Rule Language in preparation

Ontology and EB18 DAML+OIL Ontology Language DAML+OIL: Result of a Joint (European + US-American) Committee Extension of RDF Schema –Class Expressions (Intersection, Union, Complement) –XML Schema Datatypes –Enumerations –Property Restrictions Cardinality Constraints Value Restrictions

Ontology and EB19 Web Services

Ontology and EB20 What Is DAML-S Users and software agents should be able to discover, invoke, compose, and monitor Web resources offering particular services and having particular properties. Part of the DARPA Agent Markup Language program An ontology of services, called DAML-S.

Ontology and EB21 Some Motivating Tasks Automatic Web service discovery Automatic Web service invocation Automatic Web service composition and interoperation Automatic Web service execution monitoring

Ontology and EB22 Top Level of the Service Ontology Service Resource Service Grounding ServiceProfile ServiceModel provide presents supportsdescribedBy (what it does) (how it works) (how to access it)

Ontology and EB23 Process Modeling Ontology

Ontology and EB24 Application of Ontology in Declarative EB Construct EB ontologies using DAML –including the Business Processes, Business Documents, Core Components. Convert XML document to RDF based on the ontologies. Classification of BPs, BDs and CCs. Semantic Registry Services –Conceptual search –Automatic negotiation of EB Agreements between trading partners –Agent-mediated services Automatic code generation from RDF Agent-mediated EB

Ontology and EB25

Ontology and EB26 Forming CPA by Automatic Negotiation Packaging Transport Rol e Packaging Transport Rol e matches Basic tasks of forming CPA

Rule-based Formation of CPA Ontology (BPS, BD, CC) BPS: Business Process Schema BD: Business Document CC: Core Components Inference Engine Rule Base RDF triples store Prolog rules Web Server Input: CPP 1,CPP 2 Result: CPA or difference

Ontology and EB28 Two-Layer Agent-Mediated EB Architecture We propose a two-layer agent-mediated EB architecture, where –The Upper Layer consists of agents that play the role of Business Collaboration and Choreography in ebXML, –The Lower Layer consists of agents each of which accomplishes a basic Business Transaction in ebXML.

Interactions between BT Agents

Interactions between BC Agents

Generation of Execution Code from CPA Inference Engine Rule Base CPA BC Agent Code BT Agent Code

Ontology and EB33 Conclusions EB standards are moving towards declarative approach. We propose a declarative approach to EB implementation –Ontology –Rule-based –Generation of execution codes from specification documents