Semantic B2B-integration Using an Ontological Message Metamodel

Abstract

E-Business applications are often required to use different, incompatible, message sets to implement message interfaces for a business-to-business (B2B) communication. This makes communication with every new partner a new interoperability problem. In this article, we present a semantic-mediation architecture that provides for interoperable B2B data exchange. The mediation process is based on an Ontological Metamodel of message schemas and messages, and uses existing reference business ontologies. An approach for message schema semantic reconciliation and annotation is devised to support the mediation. We demonstrate the approach on a scenario that involves two incompatible message interfaces, one UN/EDIFACT based and another OAGIS XML based.