Research on ontology is becoming increasingly widespread in the computer science community, and its importance is being recognized in a multiplicity of research fields and application areas, including knowledge engineering, database design and integration, information retrieval and extraction. We shall use the generic term information systems, in its broadest sense, to collectively refer to these application perspectives. We argue in this paper that so-called ontologies present their own methodological and architectural peculiarities: on the methodological side, their main peculiarity is the adoption of a highly interdisciplinary approach, while on the architectural side the most interesting aspect is the centrality of the role they can play in an information system, leading to the perspective of ontology-driven information systems.

EDI (electronic data interchange) messages are notoriously lean and difficult (or impossible) to interpret without additional information. While recognizing

What EDI needs is a good semantics, that is, a workable formal theory of what EDI messages mean. As is widely recognized, the point applies to electronic commerce and to communications by artificial agents in general. Some progress has been made in this direction, but very much work remains to be done. In this paper we introduce and discuss the spanning hypothesis for agent (or, e.g., EDI or electronic commerce) communication languages. The spanning hypothesis is a claim about the semantics for a given communication language, and we think it represents a necessary condition for truly successful artificial communication in electronic commerce. After discussing and clarifying the hypothesis, and how it might be confirmed, we present evidence in its favor from an analysis of several EDIFACT transaction sets. 1.

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.

Today’s large companies face significant challenges in the integration of differently configured ERP systems which have evolved within the last decade. These systems impede the flow of information along the value chain which is vital for supply chain management and holistic controlling processes. They also create implementation inefficiencies since learning and scale effects are not taken advantage of. Therefore, establishing standards for the harmonization of independent and distributed systems would have a profound positive competitive impact. This article describes the Template Handbook, a standardization approach which was developed and implemented in a project with a multinational company, the Robert Bosch Group. ERP templates establish interoperability by identically configuring individual ERP systems within a company. They are enablers for the automatic exchange of information between ERP systems and the multiplication of know-how obtained from multiple ERP implementations. A vital component for the development and the roll-out of the templates was the method which was elaborated in the project.

This paper analyses the problems which are being faced by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular when integrating EDI with their internal systems. For example, multiple document translation standards (and the various implementations which exist for each) must often be supported by a single company; and each of these EDI subsets must be mapped manually to their application flat files. A variety of solutions exist to help address this integration problem, including industry-specific and generic implementation guidelines, tabledriven EDI software and Internet-based EDI services. We then describe a new technology called BSI (Business Systems Interoperation), developed by Ken Steel from the University of Melbourne, Australia, which is intended to replace EDI and solve the integration problem. This technology is able to map two application flat files directly (without requiring manual mapping) using specification files which describe the structure and content of both flat f...