Ontoprise: B 3 - Semantic B2B Broker whitepaper review Bernhard Schueler CSCI 8350, Spring 2002,UGA

Bernhard Schueler - Ontoprise: B 3 CSCI 8350, Spring 2002,UGA 2 Overview Aim of OntopriseAim of Ontoprise Problem: interoperabilityProblem: interoperability Previous approachesPrevious approaches Using ontologiesUsing ontologies Using RDFUsing RDF RemarksRemarks

Bernhard Schueler - Ontoprise: B 3 CSCI 8350, Spring 2002,UGA 3 Aim of Ontoprise The aim of Ontoprise is to provide ontology-based B2B- applications. Those applications should make the semantics of business information machine-processable.

Bernhard Schueler - Ontoprise: B 3 CSCI 8350, Spring 2002,UGA 4 Example: Product Catalogues The seller’s product catalogue is transformed into an electronic data format. Programmers write transformation programs to generate different formats and views required by buyers. This process requires human resources and time.

Bernhard Schueler - Ontoprise: B 3 CSCI 8350, Spring 2002,UGA 5 Example computer dealer Seller and buyer have catalogues, which are structured differently. Seller’s catalogue: a printer has an attribute type with values laser, ink or matrix. Buyer’s catalogue: there is a subclass laser printer.

Bernhard Schueler - Ontoprise: B 3 CSCI 8350, Spring 2002,UGA 6 Problem: Mapping How can the data formats automatically be mapped between the catalogues? Mapping is necessary to create and update the buyer’s catalogue. It is expensive to program those mappings. Solution: automate the creation of mappings, which can automate creation and update of the catalogue.

Bernhard Schueler - Ontoprise: B 3 CSCI 8350, Spring 2002,UGA 7 Previous approaches - EDIFACT EDIFACT provides a standardized electronic format to exchange data between sellers and buyers, allows the specification of standards for application areas. The standards cover the semantics of different application areas.

Bernhard Schueler - Ontoprise: B 3 CSCI 8350, Spring 2002,UGA 8 Previous approaches – XML XML-specifications provide a semi-structured description of products, orders, …. DTDs or XML-schema specifications define the structure of the data.

Bernhard Schueler - Ontoprise: B 3 CSCI 8350, Spring 2002,UGA 9 Advantages of XML over EDIFACT Readable for non-experts, Integrated with other document/data exchange standards, DTDs, XML-schema enable generation of tools like form editors, Designed for the web.

Bernhard Schueler - Ontoprise: B 3 CSCI 8350, Spring 2002,UGA 10 XML Description, Example: a_5634 printer laser a_5634 laserprinter

Bernhard Schueler - Ontoprise: B 3 CSCI 8350, Spring 2002,UGA 11 Deficiencies of XML – 1 Implicit agreement on meaning of tags is necessary. Validation of XML using DTDs is only syntactic. The labeled tree structure is checked. There can’t be semantic constraints, e.g. The price of a mouse may only be 1/100 of the price of a computer system. There is no inheritance.

Bernhard Schueler - Ontoprise: B 3 CSCI 8350, Spring 2002,UGA 12 Deficiencies of XML – 2 Transformations: They are purely syntactical, using XSLT and DTDs. Therefore they would have to bee hand-coded. Queries: XQL and XML-QL allow to query the document structure. Give me all printers for which cartridges are available that last for more than 5000 pages. Can be done. But it’s very cumbersome and overloaded with syntactic aspects.

Bernhard Schueler - Ontoprise: B 3 CSCI 8350, Spring 2002,UGA 13 Ontologies Ontologies define a domain and provide a shared vocabulary. “leight-weight” ontologies model concepts with properties and relationships, which are embedded in an is-a-hierarchy. They are comparable to database schemata. “heavy-weight ontologies also contain rules and constraints.

Bernhard Schueler - Ontoprise: B 3 CSCI 8350, Spring 2002,UGA 14 Ontologies in B 3 Ontology OntoLift DTD XML documents DTD XML documents OntoMap DTD DTD Maker DTD Custom

Bernhard Schueler - Ontoprise: B 3 CSCI 8350, Spring 2002,UGA 15 Ontologies in B 3 - with RDF Ontology RDF documents OntoMap RDF documents

Bernhard Schueler - Ontoprise: B 3 CSCI 8350, Spring 2002,UGA 16 The B 3 B2B Broker – Basic tools OntoEdit, OntoFact, generates forms for attributes and relations of instances (of concepts of an ontology), OntoAnnotate, allows the user to add meta information to HTML, Word, PDF.

Bernhard Schueler - Ontoprise: B 3 CSCI 8350, Spring 2002,UGA 17 The B 3 B2B Broker – Advanced tools OntoLift, provides means to identify concepts and relationships from an XML-DTD or XML-schema, DTDMaker, OntoMap, semi-automated creation of mapping rules, OntoCompile, creates a set of XSLT transformations.

Bernhard Schueler - Ontoprise: B 3 CSCI 8350, Spring 2002,UGA 18 Remarks By the time the paper was published not all of the tools had been implemented. By now, data would rather be stored using RDF than pure XML. A means to create forms, views and web content form RDF might be more interesting.