Application of Ontology in Electronic Business

1
Application of Ontology in Electronic Business

• Ching-Long Yeh
• Department of Computer Science and Engineering
• Tatung University
• chingyeh_at_cse.ttu.edu.tw
• http//www.cse.ttu.edu.tw/chingyeh

2
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

3
Electronic Commerce

• Evolution of electronic commerce
• B2C, human-to-machine, online catalogue service
• B2B, AP-to-AP,
• EB standards
• RosettaNet?ebXML?BizTalk?

Company A
Company B
Backend AP
Backend AP
4
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

5
ebXML Technical Architecture
6
ebXML Infrastructure

• EB infrastructure consists of
• Trading partners information
• Collaboration Protocol Profile (CPP) and
  Collaboration Protocol Agreement (CPA)
• Business process and information meta model
• Business Process Schema Specification
• Core component and core library functionality
• Registry functionality
• Messaging service functionality

Common BP and vocabulary
7
CPP Structure
ltCollaborationProtocolProfile xmlns"http//www.e
bxml.org/namespaces/tradePartner" xmlnsds"http
//www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig" xmlnsxlink"http
//www.w3.org/1999/xlink" version"1.1"gt
ltPartyInfogt lt!--one or more--gt ...
lt/PartyInfogt ltPackaging id"ID"gt lt!--one or
more--gt ... ltPackaginggt ltdsSignaturegt
lt!--zero or one--gt ... lt/dsSignaturegt
ltCommentgttextlt/Commentgt lt!--zero or more--gt
lt/CollaborationProtocolProfilegt
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CPA Structure
ltCollaborationProtocolAgreement
xmlns"http//www.ebxml.org/namespaces/tradePart
ner" xmlnsbpm"http//www.ebxml.org/namesp
aces/businessProcess" xmlnsds
"http//www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig" xmlnsxlink
"http//www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
cpaid"YoursAndMyCPA" version"1.2"gt
ltStatus value "proposed"/gt
ltStartgt1988-04-07T183909lt/Startgt
ltEndgt1990-04-07T184000lt/Endgt
lt!--ConversationConstraints MAY appear 0 or 1
times--gt ltConversationConstraints
invocationLimit "100"
concurrentConversations "4"/gt ltPartyInfogt
lt/PartyInfogt ltPartyInfogt lt/PartyInfogt
ltPackaging id"N20"gt lt!--one or more--gt
lt/Packaginggt ltdsSignaturegtany combination of
text and elements lt/dsSignaturegt ltComment
xmllang"en-gb"gtany textlt/Commentgt lt!--zero or
more--gt lt/CollaborationProtocolAgreementgt
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Working Architecture of CPP/CPA
Party A (Seller, Server)

• Any Party may register its CPPs to an ebXML
  Registry.
• Party B discovers trading partner A (Seller) by
  searching in the Registry and downloads CPP(A) to
  Party Bs server.
• Party B creates CPA(A,B) and sends CPA(A,B) to
  Party A.
• 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.
• Parties A and B configure their run-time systems
  with the information in the CPA.
• Parties A and B do business under the new CPA.

Registry
5.
CPP(A)
1.
(Document)
(Exec. codet)
CPA(A,B)
CPA(A,B)
CPP(B)
1.
2.
3.
4.
6.
CPP(X)
CPP(Y)
CPA(A,B)
CPA(A,B)
(Document)
(Exec. codet)
CPP(Z)
5.
Party B (Buyer, Server)
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Business Process SchemaConcept
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Business Process Schema in XML
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Procedural Approach to EB

• Specifications
• Not machine-readable
• Need human interpretation
• Lack of partner discovery mechanism (registry,
  CPP, CPA)
• Example RosettaNet

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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

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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

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RDFResource Description Framework

• Statement
• Ora Lassila is the creator of the resource
  http//www.w3.org/Home/Lassila
• Structure
• Resource (subject) http//www.w3.org/Home/Las
  sila
• Property (predicate) http//www.schema.org/Cre
  ator
• Value (object)
• "Ora Lassila

http//www.w3.org/Home/Lassila
sCreator
screatedWith
http//www.w3c.org/amaya
Ora Lassila
ltrdfRDFgt ltrdfDescription about"http//www.w3.
org/Home/Lassila"gt ltsCreatorgtOra
Lassilalt/sCreatorgt ltscreatedWith
rdfresourcehttp//www.w3c.org/amaya/gt
lt/rdfDescriptiongt lt/rdfRDFgt
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RDFS

• The RDF Schema mechanism provides a basic type
  system for use in RDF models.
• rdfsResource, rdfsClass, rdfsLiteral
• rdfssubclassOf, rdfsdomain, rdfsrange
• rdfslabel, rdfscomment
• 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

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DARPA Agent Markup Language Program

• DARPA funded Research Program (also funded the
  Development of the ARPANNET -gt Internet)
• Focusing on building the foundation for the
  Semantic Web http//www.daml.org
• Ontology Language DAMLOIL Result of a Joint
  (European US-American) Committee
• Rule Language in preparation

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DAMLOIL

• Ontology Language DAMLOIL 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

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Web Services
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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.

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Some Motivating Tasks

• Automatic Web service discovery
• Automatic Web service invocation
• Automatic Web service composition and
  interoperation
• Automatic Web service execution monitoring

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Top Level of the Service Ontology
Resource
ServiceProfile
provide
presents
(what it does)
Service
(how it works)
(how to access it)
supports
describedBy
ServiceGrounding
ServiceModel
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Process Modeling Ontology
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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

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Forming CPA by Automatic Negotiation
Basic tasks of forming CPA
matches
matches
matches
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Rule-based Formation of CPA
Ontology (BPS, BD, CC)
RDF triples store
Inference Engine
Web Server
Rule Base
Prolog rules
Input CPP1,CPP2 Result CPA or difference
BPS Business Process Schema BD Business
Document CC Core Components
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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.

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