Abstract
An e-Business standard is a technical specification that provides a shared understanding and agreement on the shared information and data among trading partners. Standards are usually developed in a standards development organisation, where a guideline for the process of developing standards is provided. However, these guidelines are mainly concerned with the administrative aspect of the standardisation process, and there is a lack of practical technological support for developing the content of a standard specification. This chapter reviews the characteristics of e-Business standards and their development process and presents OntoStanD, a novel, comprehensive, ontology-based collaborative standards development methodology. OntoStanD is then applied on ebXML business process specification schema to demonstrate the application of OntoStanD.
TopBackground
Standards are important facilitators for achieving B2B interoperability. A Standard is a technical specification approved by a recognised standardisation body, which is designed to be used consistently, as a rule, a guideline, or a definition across particular communities of interest (ETSI, 2010). The aim of standards is to provide unambiguous specifications for error-free exchange of documents and information to achieve mutual benefit.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Normative Statement: Define the prescriptive requirements of a specification and are distinguished by the use of the reserved keywords such as MUST, SHOULD and MAY.
E-Business Standard: A technical specification which provides a common understanding and agreement on the shared information and data among trading partners
ebBP: A standard process definition language for defining and monitoring e-Business collaborations. It is one of the five key components of ebXML framework.
OntoStanD: A comprehensive ontology-based standards development methodology, which takes into account the collaborative nature of standard development.
DOGMA: A collaborative ontology engineering framework which has its roots in database semantics and model theory and natural language semantics.
Standards Development Process: A set of guidelines for the process of developing standards.
Ontology Engineering: A set of activities that concern the ontology development process, its lifecycle and creation methods.