![](bg3.png)
Languages and / or visualised by Business Process
Modelling Notations.
B2B transactions are composed of Business
Document exchanges, within the steps of Business
Processes. Therefore, the next layer represents
Business Document specifications, such as UBL
(Universal Business Language) and xCBL (XML
Common Business Library. Business Document
standards can also be industry specific or industry
neutral.
Business Context is another layer in the e-
Business Interoperability stack and provides
contextual information to be used in Business
Documents and Business Process specifications.
Unified Context Methodology (UCM) is an example
from this layer, which is a UN/CEFACT
specification and aims at facilitating context-
sensitive modelling of e-Business transactions.
Interoperability Profiles are subsets of standard
specifications which focus on specific business
processes or industries. Northern European Section
UBL (NESUBL) is an example from this layer.
Currently e-Business standards are mainly based
on XML. Built upon W3C standards, XML based e-
Business standards, such as ebXML and RosettaNet,
provide a good basis for a common syntactical
understanding between trading partners. XML based
e-Business standards are a big step towards B2B
integration and have been quite successful in
providing general and well utilised syntactic
standards. However, they cannot facilitate semantic
integration between business partners as XML can
only cover syntax and not the semantics of the
transactions.
Ontologies, on the other hand, are an appropriate
means of unambiguously capturing the definitions
and interrelationships of concepts in a formal,
unambiguous and machine interpretable manner,
with the aim of a shared understanding of a domain,
which is indeed the ultimate goal of e-Business
standards. Therefore, utilising ontologies seems an
appropriate approach for defining more expressive,
stable and interoperable e-Business standards.
3 E-BUSINESS STANDARDS
AND ONTOLOGIES
A considerable number of publications emphasise on
the importance of semantic web technologies and
ontologies in B2B transactions (Legner, Wende,
2007)(Kajan, Stoimenov, 2005)(Wu, Li & Yang,
2006)(Gong, Ning, Chen, O'Sullivan,
2006)(Höfferer, 2007)(Liegl, Huemer & Zapletal
2009)(Vujasinovic et al., 2010). There are also a
growing number of ontologies developed for e-
Business related standards in the literature.
Examples are oXPDL, an ontology for XPDL
(Haller, Gaaloul & Marmolowski, 2008), an
ontology for WS-BPEL (Nitzsche, Wutke & Van
Lessen, 2007), ebXML Registry Profile for OWL
(OASIS ebXML Registry TC, 2006), which
provides specifications for publishing and
discovering OWL ontologies in the ebXML
Registry/Repository and OntologUBL, which
provides an ontology for Universal Business
Language (The Ontolog Forum, 2002 ).
There are also a few works focusing on utilising
ontologies in conjunction with e-Business standards.
Vujasinovic, Ivezic, Kulvatunyou, Barkmeyer,
Missikof, Marjanovic and Miletic (2010) provide a
semantic mediation architecture for standard based
B2B interoperability. This work emphasises the
importance of Standard Development Organisations
in achieving standard based semantic B2B
integration and thus highlights the importance of
ontologies in relation with e-Business standards.
OASIS may be considered as the first Standard
Development Organisation to address ontologies and
semantic web technologies and their synergy with
standards. The first ontology related initiative in
OASIS is the Semantic Support for Electronic
Business Document Interoperability Technical
Committee (OASIS SET TC, 2009), which aims at
developing specifications for machine processable
semantic content of the Electronic Business
Documents based on the UN/CEFACT Core
Components Technical Specification (CCTS).
Another relevant TC in OASIS, which may be
considered as the first official ontology based
standard Technical Committee, is called OASIS
Quantities and Units of Measure Ontology Standard
(QUOMOS) Technical Committee (OASIS
QUOMOS TC, 2010). Ontolog forum (The Ontolog
Community, 2010) is another relevant initiative
which addresses the importance of ontologies for
standard community and therefore had ‘Toward
Ontology-based Standards’ as their 2009 ontology
summit theme. In fact OASIS QUOMOS was the
result of discussions in the ontolog forum, which
ended up as an OASIS TC. These efforts emphasise
on the significance of ontologies and semantic web
technologies in the standards world and imply that it
is time for the intersection of these two
communities.
Nevertheless, almost no effort has yet been taken
to utilising ontologies for developing, authoring or
TOWARDS ONTOLOGY BASED E-BUSINESS STANDARDS
171