A Brief Introduction to the Semantic Representations of the UN/CEFACT CCTS-based Electronic Business Document

Artifacts Asuman Dogac, METU, Turkey

Yildiray Kabak, SRDC Ltd.,Turkey

The Problem Addressed: All CCTS based standards use CCTS differently

The Solution Envisaged: Developing Semantic Tools to Semi-Automate the Mappings among Different CCTS based Standards

SET TC Objectives revisited UN/CEFACT CCTS (Core Component Technical Specification)

defines the semantics of document artifacts However, currently this semantics is available only through text-

based search mechanisms

SET TC aim is to explicate the semantics of CCTS based business document standards by defining their semantic properties through a formal, machine processable language as an ontology

In this way, it becomes possible to compute a harmonized ontology which gives The similarities among document schema ontology classes

of different document standards through both The semantic properties they share and The semantic equivalences established through reasoning

The Upper Ontologies

The semantics is explicated at two levels: At the first level, an upper ontology describing the CCTS document content model is specified

Furthermore, at this level, the upper ontologies of the prominent CCTS based standards, namely, GS1 XML, OAGIS 9.1 and UBL are also developed

The various equivalence relationships between the classes of the CCTS upper ontology and the CCTS based document standard ontologies are defined

These relationships are later used to find the similarities among the document artifacts from different document schemas

Example: Core Component Data Type semantics CCTS provides a fixed set of reusable “Core

Component Data Types" (CCTs) such as Amount, Identier, or Measure

The Core Component Type semantics is explicated through the “owl: CoreComponentType" class

For each of the 14 CCTs, a corresponding OWL class is created and inserted as the subclass of “owl:CoreComponentType" class

Core Component Data Type semantics<owl:Class rdf:ID="CoreComponentType" /> <owl:Class rdf:ID="Amount.Type"> <rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#CoreComponentType"/> </owl:Class> <owl:Class rdf:ID="BinaryObject.Type"> <rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#CoreComponentType"/> </owl:Class> <owl:Class rdf:ID="Code.Type"> <rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#CoreComponentType"/> </owl:Class> <owl:Class rdf:ID="Date.Type"> <rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#CoreComponentType"/> </owl:Class> <owl:Class rdf:ID="DateTime.Type"> <rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#CoreComponentType"/> </owl:Class>…

Other Semantic Properties of CCTS Core Components Context (the “context” semantics is defined at an absolute

minimum since UN/CEFACT UCM is working on this subject)

The structure of the core components (BCCs and ASCCs making up ACCs)

The semantics implied by the naming convention used (“Object Class Term” and “Representation Term”)

The semantics implied by the Business Information Entities (based on a Core Component and used in a context)

The semantics implied by the code lists

CCTS Upper Ontology

The Upper Ontologies

The semantics is explicated at two levels: At the first level, an upper ontology describing the CCTS document content model is specied

Furthermore, at this level, the upper ontologies for the prominent CCTS based standards, namely, GS1 XML, OAGIS 9.1 and UBL are also developed

The various equivalence relationships between the classes of the CCTS upper ontology and the CCTS based document standard ontologies are defined

These relationships are later used to find the similarities among the document artifacts from different document schemas

Document Schema Ontologies At the next level, the semantics of the document schemas in

each standard are described based on its upper ontology The difference between the document schema specific ontology

and the upper ontology is that The upper ontology describes the generic entities in a document

content model Whereas document schema ontologies describe the actual

document artifacts as the subclasses of the classes in the upper ontology

The SET XSD-OWL tool converts a CCTS based document schema into OASIS SET TC OWL Definition and is publicly available from http://www.srdc.metu.edu.tr/iSURF/OASIS-SET-TC/tools/OASISSET.zip

SET Harmonized Ontology

When these ontologies are harmonized using a DL reasoner, the computed inferred ontologies reveal the implicit equivalences and subsumtion relationships between the document artifacts

In other words, The shared semantic properties of the CCTS based

document artifacts together with The implicit relationships inferred, help to identify their

similarities

Next step…

Further explanations related with the Deliverable?

How to use SET Specifications in real life applications? In the iSURF Project to map supply chain

planning documents conforming to different standards to each other

TC Members proposals…

Thank you!