Automating Business Context Categorization to Produce Semantic Interoperability: The Rules-based ebXML Approach

Arofan Gregory Commerce One Commerce One Labs, xCBL Division 19191 Vallco Parkway Cupertino, CA 95014 ABSTRACT Standardized business semantics allow business applications to share not only a specific, standard syntax, but also to communicate directly without a lot of costly analysis and integration. The ebXML activity has been writing such business rules in XML. We examine the concept of rules, their relationship to documentation, what it means to express rules in a "syntax-free" mode as opposed to writing them in XML, and the process of building rules. We then highlight some of the issues related to the DTDs for rules and how they translate into XML instances; we also elucidate the concept of semantic interoperability and how to achieve it.