Distributed object-oriented schema for XML-based electronic catalog sharing semantics among businesses

Internet commerce is increasing the demands of service integrations by sharing XML-based catalogs. We propose the PCO (Portable Compound Object) data model supporting semantic inheritance to ensure the synonymy of heterogeneous semantics among distributed schemas that different authors define independently. Also, the PCO model makes semantic relationships independent of an initial class hierarchy, and it enables rapid schema evolution across the entire Internet business. This preserves semantic interoperability without changing pre-defined classes. We have also encoded the PCO model into two XML-based languages: the PCO Specification Language (PSL) and the Portable Composite Language (PCL). This paper demonstrates that intermediaries defining service semantics in PSL can automatically integrate multiple suppliers´ PCL catalogs for their agent-mediated services