To date, the B2B paradigm includes the publishing of rigid message and process standards by organisations such as GS1, BME, UBL, and UN/CEFACT. Businesses are expected to obey those standards, which may not reflect their commercial or business niche. In this chapter, a mechanism is described to simplify and formalise negotiations on bilateral information semantics and process definitions bilaterally, due to support by automated tools. The mechanism is based on ontology engineering and speech act theory. It results in XML schemas that may directly be implemented in B2B communication. Interfaces with back end systems are created on the fly. Work for this chapter was supported by the European Commission through the 7th FP project ADVANCE (http://www.advance-logistics.eu/) under grant No. 257398.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.