Application of Ontology in Electronic Business

Ching-Long YehDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering

Tatung Universitychingyeh@cse.ttu.edu.tw

http://www.cse.ttu.edu.tw/chingyeh

Ontology and EB 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

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 A Company B

Transport, routing, packaging

Business processes,business documents

Backend APBackend AP

Ontology and EB 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

Transport, routing, packaging

Business processes,business documents

Ontology and EB 5

ebXML Technical Architecture

1. Obtain ebXMLspec

2. Build and deployebXML applications

3. Prepare andpublish CPP

4. Discover A'sprofile

5. Would like toengage in businesscenarioi usingebXML and forman agreement(CPA)

ebXMLregistry

Com

pany

A

Com

pany

B

6. Do business according to the content of CPA

Ontology and EB 6

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 andvocabulary

Ontology and EB 7

CPP Structure<CollaborationProtocolProfile

xmlns="http://www.ebxml.org/namespaces/tradePartner"xmlns:ds="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#"xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"version="1.1">

<PartyInfo> <!--one or more--> ... </PartyInfo> <Packaging id="ID"> <!--one or more--> ... <Packaging> <ds:Signature> <!--zero or one--> ... </ds:Signature> <Comment>text</Comment> <!--zero or more--> </CollaborationProtocolProfile>

Ontology and EB 8

CPA Structure<CollaborationProtocolAgreement

xmlns="http://www.ebxml.org/namespaces/tradePartner" xmlns:bpm="http://www.ebxml.org/namespaces/businessProcess"

xmlns:ds = "http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#"xmlns:xlink = "http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"

cpaid="YoursAndMyCPA" version="1.2"> <Status value = "proposed"/> <Start>1988-04-07T18:39:09</Start> <End>1990-04-07T18:40:00</End> <!--ConversationConstraints MAY appear 0 or 1 times--> <ConversationConstraints invocationLimit = "100" concurrentConversations = "4"/> <PartyInfo> … </PartyInfo> <PartyInfo> … </PartyInfo> <Packaging id="N20"> <!--one or more-->

… </Packaging> <ds:Signature>any combination of text and elements </ds:Signature> <Comment xml:lang="en-gb">any text</Comment> <!--zero or more--></CollaborationProtocolAgreement>

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.

1.CPA(A,B)

CPA(A,B)

(Document)(Exec. codet)

CPA(A,B)

CPA(A,B)(Document)(Exec. codet)

2.3.4.

5.

5.

6.

Party A(Seller, Server)

Party B(Buyer, Server)

Registry

Working Architecture of CPP/CPA

Ontology and EB 10

Business Process SchemaConcept

Ontology and EB 11

Business Process Schema in XML

Ontology and EB 12

Procedural Approach to EB

• Specifications– Not machine-readable– Need human interpretation

• Lack of partner discovery mechanism (registry, CPP, CPA)

• Example: RosettaNet

Ontology and EB 13

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 EB 14

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 EB 15

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/Lassila– Property (predicate)

http://www.schema.org/#Creator– Value (object)

"Ora Lassila”

<rdf:RDF> <rdf:Description about="http://www.w3.org/Home/Lassila"> <s:Creator>Ora Lassila</s:Creator> <s:createdWith rdf:resource=“http://www.w3c.org/amaya”/> </rdf:Description></rdf:RDF>

http://www.w3c.org/amaya

http://www.w3.org/Home/Lassila

Ora Lassila

s:createdWiths:Creator

Ontology and EB 16

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 languag

es such as CycL and KIF.

• Basis of ontology language

Ontology and EB 17

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: http://www.daml.org

• Ontology Language DAML+OIL: Result of a Joint (European + US-American) Committee

• Rule Language in preparation

Ontology and EB 18

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 EB 19

Web Services

Serviceregistry

Servicerequester

Serviceprovider

FindWSDL, UDDI

PublishWSDL, UDDI

Bind

Servicedescriptions

Servicedescriptions

Services

Ontology and EB 20

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 EB 21

Some Motivating Tasks

• Automatic Web service discovery• Automatic Web service invocation• Automatic Web service composition and

interoperation• Automatic Web service execution monitoring

Ontology and EB 22

Top Level of the Service Ontology

Service

Resource

ServiceGrounding

ServiceProfile

ServiceModel

provide presents

supports

describedBy

(what it does)

(how it works)

(how to access it)

Ontology and EB 23

Process Modeling Ontology

Ontology and EB 24

Application of Ontology in Declarative EB

• Construct EB ontologies using DAML– including the Business Processes, Business Documents, Core Co

mponents.

• 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 EB 25

1. Obtain ebXMLspec(Conceptualsearch)

3. Prepare andpublish CPP(Automaticcomposition)

4. Discover A'sprofile(Conceptualsearch)

5. Would like toengage in businesscenarioi usingebXML and forman agreement(CPA)(Automaticnegotiation of CPA,Automatic codegeneration)

ebXMLregistry

Com

pany

A

Com

pany

B

6. Do business according to the content of CPA(AP-to-AP interaction)

2. Build and deployebXML applications(Automatic codegeneration)

Ontology and EB 26

Forming CPA by Automatic Negotiation

Packaging

Transport

Role

Packaging

Transport

Role

matches

matches

matches

Basic tasks of forming CPA

Rule-based Formation of CPA

Ontology(BPS, BD, CC)

BPS: Business Process SchemaBD: Business DocumentCC: Core Components

InferenceEngine

Rule Base

RDF triplesstore

Prolog rules

WebServer

Input: CPP1,CPP2

Result: CPA or difference

Ontology and EB 28

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.

F

BT

FTP, SMTP, HTTP

F

FTP, SMTP, HTTP

F Facilitator

BC BC

BC

BC

BusnessCollaborationAgent

BC

TP TP TP

UpperLayer

LowerLayer

BT

BT

BT

BTBusinessTransactionAgent

BT

BTBT

BT

TP TradingPartner

Interactions between BT Agents

BT BT

RequestingAgent

RespondingAgent

Request Document

Response Document

Receipt Ack Signal

Accept Ack Signal

Receipt Ack Signal

Interactions between BC Agents

RequestingAgent

RespondingAgent

Request Document

Response Document

Receipt Ack Signal

Accept Ack Signal

Receipt Ack Signal

RequestingAgent

RespondingAgent

Request Document

Response Document

Receipt Ack Signal

Accept Ack Signal

Receipt Ack Signal

RequestingAgent

RespondingAgent

Request Document

Response Document

Receipt Ack Signal

Accept Ack Signal

Receipt Ack Signal

RequestingAgent

RespondingAgent

Request Document

Response Document

Receipt Ack Signal

Accept Ack Signal

Receipt Ack Signal

BC BC

Generation of Execution Code from CPA

InferenceEngine

Rule Base

CPABC Agent Code

BT Agent Code

Ontology and EB 33

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