Semantic Support for Electronic Business Document Interoperability Asuman Dogac, Yalin Yarimagan, Yildiray Kabak Middle East Technical University and Software Research, Development and Consultancy Ltd. Ankara, Turkey This work is supported by the European Commission through the ICT 213031 iSURF Project: http://www.iSURFProject.eu Ontolog Forum Presentation March 6, 2008 A. Dogac, Y. Yarimagan, Y. Kabak 1
The Motivation of this work… The European Commission’s “Enterprise Interoperability Research Roadmap” foresees a “Interoperability Service Utility (ISU)” “Interoperability as a utility-like capability needs to be supported by an enabling system of services for delivering basic interoperability to enterprises, independent of particular IT deployment” http://cordis.europa.eu/ist/ict-ent-net/ei-roadmap_en.htm A very important component of “Interoperability Service Utility” is the interoperability of the business document instances exchanged through the service utility This work is being realized within the scope of the ICT 213031 iSURF Project http://www.iSURFProject.eu Ontolog Forum Presentation March 6, 2008 A. Dogac, Y. Yarimagan, Y. Kabak 2
Talk Outline A Brief Overview of Electronic Business Document Standards UN/CEFACT Core Component Technical Specification Semantic Tools for Interoperability Support Use of Ontologies for Semantic Annotation and Ontology Alignment Document Translation System Architecture and Operation Conclusions Ontolog Forum Presentation March 6, 2008 A. Dogac, Y. Yarimagan, Y. Kabak 3
Development of Electronic Business Document Interoperability Standards The development of electronic business document standards has been evolutionary based on: The traditional EDI technology Affected by the technological developments such as the Internet and XML Affected by the interoperability needs of the current more dynamic eBusiness applications No document standard is sufficient for all purposes because the requirements significantly differ Amongst businesses, industries and geo-political regions Ontolog Forum Presentation March 6, 2008 A. Dogac, Y. Yarimagan, Y. Kabak 4
Some Example Business Document Standards Vertical Standards RosettaNet, CIDX, PIDX, OTA, HL7, … Horizontal Standards OAGIS, GS1 eCom, xCBL, cXML, UN/CEFACT CCL, UBL, … A survey and analysis of electronic business document standards investigating: The document design principles The use of code lists The use of XML namespaces How the standards handle extensibility and customization is available at: Kabak Y., Dogac A., “A Survey and Analysis of Electronic Business Document Standards”, Submitted to ACM Computing Surveys http://www.srdc.metu.edu.tr/webpage/publications Ontolog Forum Presentation March 6, 2008 A. Dogac, Y. Yarimagan, Y. Kabak 5
UN/CEFACT Core Component Technical Specification (CCTS) The ultimate aim of business document interoperability is to Exchange business data among partners without any prior agreements related to the document syntax and semantics Hence support “Interoperability Service Utility (ISU)” at the content level Therefore, document standard need to adapt to different contexts, be extensible and customizable UN/CEFACT Core Component Technical Specification (CCTS) is an important landmark in this direction Ontolog Forum Presentation March 6, 2008 A. Dogac, Y. Yarimagan, Y. Kabak 6
Talk Outline A Brief Overview of Electronic Business Document Standards UN/CEFACT Core Component Technical Specification Semantic Tools for Interoperability Support Use of Ontologies for Semantic Annotation and Ontology Alignment Document Translation System Architecture and Operation Conclusions Ontolog Forum Presentation March 6, 2008 A. Dogac, Y. Yarimagan, Y. Kabak 7
UN/CEFACT Core Component Technical Specification (CCTS) UN/CEFACT CCTS provides a methodology to identify a set of reusable building blocks, called Core Components to create electronic documents Core Components represent the common data elements of everyday business documents such as “Address”, “Amount”, or “Line Item” These reusable building blocks are then assembled into business documents such as “Order” or “Invoice” by using the CCTS methodology UN/CEFACT CCTS Core Components are syntax independent Ontolog Forum Presentation March 6, 2008 A. Dogac, Y. Yarimagan, Y. Kabak 8
UN/CEFACT Core Component Technical Specification (CCTS) Core components are defined to be context- independent so that they can later be restricted to different contexts: Business Process Context Product Classication Context Industry Classication Context Geopolitical Context Business Process Role Context Supporting Role Context System Capabilities Context Official Constraints Context Ontolog Forum Presentation March 6, 2008 A. Dogac, Y. Yarimagan, Y. Kabak 9
Main Features of CCTS Approach Business document schemas are composed of several basic and aggregate components Aggregate components themselves are collections of other basic and aggregate components in a recursive manner Standard components are modified in response to contexual needs When a document schema needs to be customized for a context, users need to discover or provide component versions applicable to that particular context Ontolog Forum Presentation March 6, 2008 A. Dogac, Y. Yarimagan, Y. Kabak 10
Why CCTS is important? This concept of defining context-free reusable building blocks, which are available from a single common repository, is an important innovation: The incompatibility in electronic documents is incremental rather than wholesale The users are expected to model their business documents by using the existing core components and by restricting them to their context with well defined rules Dynamic creation of interoperable documents becomes possible because if users cannot find proper components to model their documents, they can create and publish new core components The horizontal interoperability among different industries is greatly facilitated by using a single common repository and by customizing the components to different industry contexts Ontolog Forum Presentation March 6, 2008 A. Dogac, Y. Yarimagan, Y. Kabak 11
Some of the UN/CEFACT CCTS based Business Document Standards UN/CEFACT Core Components Library ( CCL ) 07A 96 ACC, 212 ASCC, 636 BCC 184 ABIE, 337 ASBIE, 1011 BBIE 35 Datatypes Universal Business Language ( UBL ) 2.0 Open Applications Group Integration Specification ( OAGIS ) 9.0 Global Standards One ( GS1 ) XML All standards implement CCTS differently! Ontolog Forum Presentation March 6, 2008 A. Dogac, Y. Yarimagan, Y. Kabak 12
UN/CEFACT Core Components Library (CCL) 07A Ontolog Forum Presentation March 6, 2008 A. Dogac, Y. Yarimagan, Y. Kabak 13
OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) 2.0 The first implementation of UN/CEFACT CCTS in XML 31 Horizontal Business Document Schemas Invoice, Order, Dispatch Advice,… Schemas for common reusable entities Amount, Payment, Item, … Ontolog Forum Presentation March 6, 2008 A. Dogac, Y. Yarimagan, Y. Kabak 14
The Problem continues: All CCTS based standards use CCTS differently Ontolog Forum Presentation March 6, 2008 A. Dogac, Y. Yarimagan, Y. Kabak 15
How to provide interoperability among electronic business document standards? Harmonization: The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), The International Organization for Standardization (ISO), The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and, The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) signed a “Memorandum of Understanding” to specify a framework of cooperation Up to now, OAGIS 9.0 and UBL 2.0 have achieved a level of harmonization: they are based on the same UN/CEFACT Unqualified Datatypes and Core Component Types However, the harmonization needs to be extended to the upper level artifacts An alternative: Providing semantic tool support for the interoperability of electronic business documents Ontolog Forum Presentation March 6, 2008 A. Dogac, Y. Yarimagan, Y. Kabak 16
Providing semantic support for the interoperability of CCTS based electronic business documents Within the scope of the iSURF Project, we developed tools: To provide machine processable semantic representations of context domains To utilize these semantics for automating tasks for the discovery, reuse and customization of components and document schemas To provide a semantics based translation mechanism for the interoperability of schemas customized by independent parties Ontolog Forum Presentation March 6, 2008 A. Dogac, Y. Yarimagan, Y. Kabak 17
Talk Outline A Brief Overview of Electronic Business Document Standards UN/CEFACT Core Component Technical Specification Semantic Tools for Interoperability Support Use of Ontologies for Semantic Annotation and Ontology Alignment Document Translation System Architecture and Operation Conclusions Ontolog Forum Presentation March 6, 2008 A. Dogac, Y. Yarimagan, Y. Kabak 18
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