Publications Details
Capturing and using precise semantics for complex transactions
In this paper the authors discuss the leveling process by which a business process ontology is formed in a distributed, multi-lingual, multi-stakeholder environment, with attention to realizing elicitation mechanisms that maintain registration of users` terms with the common ontology. Business processes are recognized from use-case analysis, specified in terms of the common ontology, and realized as operations on the components of a transaction: a temporally extended, complex, distributed object. A primary advantage of this approach is that users see private terminologies while the transaction object is specified in terms of the common ontology, and registration between the two is automatic and continuous. Ready realization of multiple interfaces to stakeholders, independently constructed validation and verification mechanisms, distributed data, and a standard elicitation mechanism and process are other advantages. The language formation process was used successfully during the development of the Border Trade Facilitation System, an agent-oriented mechanism that conducts international border-crossing transactions. In this implementation, agents operating within a federated architecture construct, populate, verify, certify, and manipulate a distributed composite transaction object to effect transport of goods over the US/Mexico border.