Electronic Commerce involves coordination between different organizations using communication technology. The coordination can be achieved in the form of an electronic market or a virtual enterprise. In both cases, contracts play a central role. In the Electronic Market, contracts are agreements on a specific business transaction. In a Virtual Enterprise, the contract is a cooperation agreement for a longer period involving integrated business processes. A general framework of business communication is presented that is applied to a case study. We argue that an agent society model is most suitable for implementing contracts.
Infomediation refers to a virtual space where the buyers and sellers can meet, negotiate, and form business relationships. We describe an infomediary-based approach that uses a semantic model to define the information space. Along with the semantic model, we employ an ontology that enables semantic data integration. XML is an emerging standard data format for cross-platform information exchange-our architecture leverages the power of XML to facilitate information exchange. Using these techniques, we are developing a web-based tool to integrate participants in an electronic marketplace. Our approach supports interoperability between loosely coupled virtual partners and enables customization of information for multiple users and devices.
The World Wide Web provides access to a great deal of information on a vast array of subjects. A user can begin a search for information by selecting a Web page and following the embedded links from page to page looking for clues to the desired information. An alternative method is to use one of the Web-based search engines to select the Web pages that refer to the general subject of the information desired. In either case, a vast amount of information is retrieved. The quantity can be overwhelming, and much of the information may be marginally relevant or completely irrelevant to the user's request.We present a methodology, architecture, and proof-of-concept prototype for query construction and results analysis that provides the user with a ranking of choices based on the user's. determination of importance. The user initially designs the query with assistance from the user's profile, a thesaurus, and previously constructed queries acting as a taxonomy of the information requirements. After the query has returned its results, decision analytic methods and information source reliability information are used in conjunction with the expanded taxonomy to rank the solution candidates.
We propose an Interorganizational Knowledge Mediation Scheme (IKMS) acting as an information infrastructure for B2B solutions for aggregating exchange information supplied by the companies participating in a trading community in order to support e-business processes. The proposed IKMS is a set of mediated descriptions of exchange information at the global level, defined as global X-classes, and relies on a set of techniques for building such global X-classes.
We propose a web notary system to support privacy keeping E-Commerce over the Internet. A web notary system can be seen as a trusted third-party enhanced with value-added services. With a web notary system, customers can provide privacy protected information and requests to the system instead to various on-line shops. The system can then search its information repository in an intelligent way on behalf of the customers and provide personalized services. In this paper, we develop a novel privacy control model based on hierarchy of privacy groups. We also design a method for efficient customer-provider matchmaking. A prototype system has been developed to demonstrate our proposals.
