E-Business Transactions Modelling; An Ontology-Based Repository

Over the last decade great expectations have been placed on enterprise knowledge modelling and management through ontologies. However, most of the existing ontological approaches concentrate on the internal part of business and the issue of e-business process modelling still remains a big challenge for research to tackle. Furthermore, interoperability is the key factor which will drive e-business to the next level by offering fully automated transactions among enterprise applications, such as enterprise resource planning or supply chain management systems. In this regard, this paper presents a cohesive ontology-based framework for developing an e-business transactions repository, in which interoperable transactions of heterogeneous business domains-enterprises, governmental and banking institutions are going to be modelled (cross-sector and cross-border). Such an Interoperability repository is a system devoted to the formal description, composition and publishing of traditional, electronic, or Web services, together with the relevant documents, rules and process descriptions in an integrated schema. Through this approach, the discovery of e-business transactions can be automated, resulting in an important tool for managing e-business transformation and change and achieving in parallel cross-sector and cross-border interoperability.