Electronic Business Contracts Between Services

Abstract

Electronic contracts mirror the paper versions exchanged between businesses today, and offer the possibility of dynamic, automatic creation and enforcement of restrictions and compulsions on service behaviour that are designed to ensure business objectives are met. Where there are many contracts within a particular application, it can be difficult to determine whether the system can reliably fulfil them all, yet computer-parsable electronic contracts may allow such verification to be automated. In this chapter, the authors describe a conceptual framework and architecture specification in which normative business contracts can be electronically represented, verified, established, renewed, and so on. In particular, they aim to allow systems containing multiple contracts to be checked for conflicts and violations of business objectives. They illustrate the framework and architecture with an aerospace aftermarket example.