A Declarative Approach to Electronic Business

1. A Declarative Approach to Electronic Business Ching-Long Yeh Department of Computer Science and Engineering Tatung University Taipei 104 Taiwan chingyeh@cse.ttu.edu.tw http://www.cse.ttu.edu.tw/chingyeh

2. Abstract • EB standards provide the neutral basis of interoperability between trading partner • Moving from procedural approach to declarative approach • Representation of EB standards using the ontology technique • Declarative approach to EB implementation A Declarative to EB

3. Business processes, business documents Business processes, business documents Transport, routing, packaging Transport, routing, packaging Electronic Commerce • Evolution of electronic commerce • B2C, human-to-machine, online catalogue service • B2B, AP-to-AP, • EB standards • RosettaNet、ebXML、BizTalk。 Company A Company B Backend AP Backend AP

4. Business processes, business documents Transport, routing, packaging General EB Architecture • EB standard architecture is divided into • Upper level: Standard business processes and document • Lower level: Services for message transport, routing and packaging • Popular standards • Horizontal integration: ebXML • Vertical integration: RosettaNet (Information Technology, Electronic Component and Semiconductor Manufacturing) • Messaging service: BizTalk Framework A Declarative to EB

5. ebXML Technical Architecture A Declarative to EB

6. ebXML Infrastructure • EB infrastructure consists of • Trading partner’s information • Collaboration Protocol Profile (CPP) and Collaboration Protocol Agreement (CPA） • Business process and information meta model • Business Process Schema Specification • Core component and core library functionality • Registry functionality • Messaging service functionality Common BP and vocabulary A Declarative to EB

7. CPP Structure <CollaborationProtocolProfile xmlns="http://www.ebxml.org/namespaces/tradePartner" xmlns:ds="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" version="1.1"> <PartyInfo> <!--one or more--> ... </PartyInfo> <Packaging id="ID"> <!--one or more--> ... <Packaging> <ds:Signature> <!--zero or one--> ... </ds:Signature> <Comment>text</Comment> <!--zero or more--> </CollaborationProtocolProfile> A Declarative to EB

8. CPA Structure <CollaborationProtocolAgreement xmlns="http://www.ebxml.org/namespaces/tradePartner" xmlns:bpm="http://www.ebxml.org/namespaces/businessProcess" xmlns:ds = "http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#" xmlns:xlink = "http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" cpaid="YoursAndMyCPA" version="1.2"> <Status value = "proposed"/> <Start>1988-04-07T18:39:09</Start> <End>1990-04-07T18:40:00</End> <!--ConversationConstraints MAY appear 0 or 1 times--> <ConversationConstraints invocationLimit = "100" concurrentConversations = "4"/> <PartyInfo> … </PartyInfo> <PartyInfo> … </PartyInfo> <Packaging id="N20"> <!--one or more--> … </Packaging> <ds:Signature>any combination of text and elements </ds:Signature> <Comment xml:lang="en-gb">any text</Comment> <!--zero or more--> </CollaborationProtocolAgreement> A Declarative to EB

9. Working Architecture of CPP/CPA • Any Party may register its CPPs to an ebXML Registry. • Party B discovers trading partner A (Seller) by searching in the Registry and downloads CPP(A) to Party B’s server. • Party B creates CPA(A,B) and sends CPA(A,B) to Party A. • Parties A and B negotiate and store identical copies of the completed CPA as a document in both servers. This process is done manually or automatically. • Parties A and B configure their run-time systems with the information in the CPA. • Parties A and B do business under the new CPA. Party A (Seller, Server) Registry 5. CPP(A) 1. (Exec. codet) (Document) CPA(A,B) CPA(A,B) CPP(B) 1. 2. 6. 4. 3. CPP(X) CPP(Y) CPA(A,B) CPA(A,B) (Exec. codet) (Document) CPP(Z) 5. Party B (Buyer, Server)

10. Business Process SchemaConcept A Declarative to EB

11. Business Process Schema in XML A Declarative to EB

12. Procedural Approach to EB • Specifications • Not machine-readable • Need human interpretation • Lack of partner discovery mechanism (registry, CPP, CPA) • Example: RosettaNet A Declarative to EB

13. Declarative Approach to EB • Specifications • Machine-readable (Business Process, Document, and Vocabulary in either UML or XML) • Enabling automatic code generation • Partner discovery mechanism (registry, CPP, CPA) • Example: ebXML A Declarative to EB

14. Role Role Packaging Packaging Transport Transport Forming CPA by Automatic Negotiation Basic tasks of forming CPA matches matches matches A Declarative to EB

15. Rule-based Formation of CPA Ontology (BPS, BD, CC) RDF triples store Web Server Inference Engine Rule Base Prolog rules Input: CPP1,CPP2 Result: CPA or difference BPS: Business Process Schema BD: Business Document CC: Core Components

16. Two-Layer Agent-Mediated EB Architecture • We propose a two-layer agent-mediated EB architecture, where • The Upper Layer consists of agents that play the role of Business Collaboration and Choreography in ebXML, • The Lower Layer consists of agents each of which accomplishes a basic Business Transaction in ebXML. A Declarative to EB

18. Interactions between BT Agents

19. Interactions between BC Agents

20. Generation of Execution Code from CPA Rule Base BC Agent Code CPA Inference Engine BT Agent Code

21. Implementation A Declarative to EB

22. Conclusions • EB standards are moving towards declarative approach. • We propose a declarative approach to EB implementation • Ontology • Rule-based • Generation of execution codes from specification documents A Declarative to EB