Electronic business is a major force shaping the digital world. Yet, despite of years of research and standardization efforts, many problems persist that prevent e-business from achieving its full potential. Problems arise from different data vocabularies, classification schemas, document names, structures, exchange formats and their varying roles in business processes. Non-standardized business terminology, lack of common acceptable and understandable processes (grammar), and lack of common dialog rules (protocols) create barriers to improving electronic business processes.
Handbook of Research on E-Business Standards and Protocols: Documents, Data and Advanced Web Technologies contains an overview of new achievements in the field of e-business standards and protocols, offers in-depth analysis of and research on the development and deployment of cutting-edge applications, and provides insight into future trends. This book unites new research that promotes harmony and agreement in business processes and attempts to choreograph business protocols and orchestrate semantic alignment between their vocabularies and grammar. Additionally, this Handbook of Research discusses new approaches to improving standards and protocols, which include the use of intelligent agents and Semantic Web technology.
The many academic areas covered in this publication include, but are not limited to:
This is a handbook, a unique collection of practical experiences, expert opinion, and future visions of what has become known as e-Business. In it, one will find timely, challenging, and often conflicting views with as a common thread, the passion and expertise of the authors in what is a critically important subject. E-Business covers the exchange of data for the purpose of conducting business. This includes the collection, storage, and exchange of data for essentially all economic activity. It includes research and discovery as well as documenting the actual exchange of goods or services through to the development of the models that predict business trends. It is a vast subject that is undergoing rapid change. This handbook is designed to serve as a guide to ongoing research and to provide a reference to support researchers' work.
Enterprises as well as public organizations more often act on a global level and in an environment that is becoming more open, complex, and dynamic. Therefore, enterprises have to deal with changing business partners and business networks as well as with changing preferences on the part of customers. With the upcoming of the Internet, its online-services, and e-business applications people expected quick and efficient solution for many of these problems. However, realizing E-Business so that it fits to the needs of the markets, is easy to use, and is efficient from the users view is a complex and maybe everlasting task.
This handbook focuses on an E-Business, which is mainly supported by standards, protocols, and other helpful instruments. For years, standards and protocols for E-Business were the focus of research community and various standards bodies. Instead of expected benefits, we got a bunch of mutually incompatible standards, even more, the vendor-enhanced version of the same standards. In the meantime, many enterprises adopted their business models to E-Business that make them highly dependable on existing standards. Advanced Web technologies and new standard initiatives based on them offer an open door to overcome aforementioned difficulties in e-business communications. This book gives a useful, comprehensive overview of such efforts and looks into future.
WHAT IS UNIQUE ABOUT THIS BOOK
The eighty authors all around the world give an excellent overview on what is going on electronic business standards and enterprise interoperability today. Their chapters address many actual and high-relevance topics as described in detail within next section. Somebody might be taken by surprise that so many challenges yet exist after all these years of standardization in e-business arena. But, just these challenges have actually triggered the book call, and by this, a number of submissions have not been a surprise for the editors.
During the preparation of Table of Contents, and especially writing this preface, editors faced-up with a number of ideas, topics, and different approaches mutually interconnected and cross-referenced. The wider guide to these interconnections is given in the next section. The facts given above lead to conclude that this book has some unique characteristics. This book is unique in terms of its coverage, approaches, and comprehensive treatment of its subject matter. More specifically, this book aims to:
A large number of figures and real-world or running examples that authors used to gain greater understanding and confidence in the presented research results represent special features of this book. In addition, authors define more than 250 key terms mostly in their own way, whilst some of them have cited standardized and widely accepted definitions.
Behind unique characteristics of the book is Editorial team whose members are symbiosis of professorship and research background, industrial and management experience, direct involvement in standards creation for a long period of time, editorial background, and an extraordinary enthusiasm around the book project. As results, Editors engaged a huge Editorial Advisory Board, with a dozen widely recognized experts from academia, industry, and standards bodies. In addition, most of the contributing authors are either experienced researchers or have background in e-business standards development.