Extracting a semantic view from an ebusiness vocabulary

B2B applications needs common formats and standards upon which to implement interoperability tools; in this paper the authors describe an approach to provide a semantic description of a document-based collaborative framework. The starting point is an ISO 11179 compliant vocabulary of business terms and a set of processes and documents, represented using a modular ontology expressed in OWL; the ontology is extracted by a software module in an automatic manner. The authors expect the ontology will support the maintenance of the framework and the data integration toward enterprises. This approach has been applied on a standard dictionary of the textile/clothing sector and represents the basis for the development of an ontology, named ONTO-MODA, within the European research project LEAPFROG IP