What is Instance

To date, the B2B paradigm includes the publishing of rigid message and process standards by organisations such as GS1, BME, UBL, and UN/CEFACT. Businesses are expected to obey those standards, which may not reflect their commercial or business niche. In this chapter, a mechanism is described to simplify and formalise negotiations on bilateral information semantics and process definitions bilaterally, due to support by automated tools. The mechanism is based on ontology engineering and speech act theory. It results in XML schemas that may directly be implemented in B2B communication. Interfaces with back end systems are created on the fly. Work for this chapter was supported by the European Commission through the 7th FP project ADVANCE (http://www.advance-logistics.eu/) under grant No. 257398.