Semantic E-Business

Abstract

We define semantic e-business as “an approach to managing knowledge for coordination of e-business processes through the systematic application of Semantic Web technologies.” Advances in Semantic Web-based technologies offer the means to integrate heterogeneous systems across organizations in a meaningful way by incorporating ontology — a common, standard, and shareable vocabulary used to represent the meaning of system entities; knowledge representation, with structured collections of information and sets of inference rules that can be used to conduct automated reasoning; and intelligent agents that collect content from diverse sources and exchange semantically enriched information. These primary components of the Semantic Web vision form the foundation technology for semantic e-business. The challenge for research in information systems and e-business is to provide insight into the design of business models and technical architecture that demonstrate the potential of technical advancements in the computer and engineering sciences to be beneficial to business and consumers. Semantic e-business seeks to apply fundamental work done in Semantic Web technologies to support the transparent flow of semantically enriched information and knowledge — including content and know-how — to enable, enhance, and coordinate collaborative e-business processes within and across organizational boundaries. Semantic e-business processes are characterized by the seamless and transparent flow of semantically enriched informationand knowledge. We present a holistic view of semantic e-business that integrates emergent and well-grounded Semantic Web technologies to improve the current state of the art in the transparency of e-business processes.