Towards ontology based e-Business standards

e-Business standards are recognised as one of the most important drivers of Business to Business Integration. These standards seek to provide unambiguous specifications for error-free exchange of documents and information between trading partners. These standards are however, syntax based and do not guarantee semantic interoperability between partners. This paper proposes the utilisation of semantic web technologies in the standards development process, aiming at developing more robust and at the same time flexible e-Business standard. In order to extract the requirements of an ontology based standard, a combined top down and bottom up approach has been adopted. This resulted in developing two ontologies: one for e-Business standards in general and one for ebXML Business Process Specification Schema (ebBP) as a specific e-Business standard. The challenge is to address the distance between these two ontologies and explore how ontologies can be utilised in developing next generation e-Business standards. It is believed that ontology based e-Business standards will enhance interoperability between organisations involved in value networks and also may facilitate the standard development process itself.