Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are becoming increasingly engaged in B2B interactions. The ubiquitousness of the Internet and the quasi-reliance on electronic document exchanges with larger trading partners have fostered this move. The main technical challenge that this brings to SMEs is that of business document integration: they need to exchange business documents with heterogeneous document formats and also integrate these documents with internal information systems. Often they can not afford using expensive, customized and proprietary solutions for document exchange and storage. Rather they need cost-effective approaches designed based on open standards and backed with easy-to-use information systems. In this dissertation, we investigate the problem of business document integration for SMEs following a design science methodology. We propose a framework and conceptual architecture for a business document integration system (BDIS). By studying existing business document formats, we recommend using the GS1 XML standard format as the intermediate format for business documents in BDIS. The GS1 standards are widely used in supply chains and logistics globally. We present an architecture for BDIS consisting of two layers: one for the design of internal information system based on relational databases, capable of storing XML business documents, and the other enabling the exchange of heterogeneous business documents at runtime. For the design layer, we leverage existing XML schema conversion approaches, and extend them, to propose a customized and novel approach for converting GS1 XML document schemas into relational schemas. For the runtime layer, we propose wrappers as architectural components for the conversion of various electronic documents formats into the GS1 XML format. We demonstrate our approach through a case study involving a GS1 XML business document. We have implemented a prototype BDIS. We have evaluated and compared it with existing research and commercial tools for XML to relational schema conversion. The results show that it generates operational and simpler relational schemas for GS1 XML documents. In conclusion, the proposed framework enables SMEs to engage effectively in electronic business.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are becoming increasingly engaged in B2B interactions. The ubiquitousness of the Internet and the quasi-reliance on electronic document exchanges with larger trading partners have fostered this move. The main technical challenge that this brings to SMEs is that of business document integration: they need to exchange business documents with heterogeneous document formats and also integrate these documents with internal information systems. Often they can not afford using expensive, customized and proprietary solutions for document exchange and storage. Rather they need cost-effective approaches designed based on open standards and backed with easy-to-use information systems. In this dissertation, we investigate the problem of business document integration for SMEs following a design science methodology. We propose a framework and conceptual architecture for a business document integration system (BDIS). By studying existing business document formats, we recommend using the GS1 XML standard format as the intermediate format for business documents in BDIS. The GS1 standards are widely used in supply chains and logistics globally. We present an architecture for BDIS consisting of two layers: one for the design of internal information system based on relational databases, capable of storing XML business documents, and the other enabling the exchange of heterogeneous business documents at runtime. For the design layer, we leverage existing XML schema conversion approaches, and extend them, to propose a customized and novel approach for converting GS1 XML document schemas into relational schemas. For the runtime layer, we propose wrappers as architectural components for the conversion of various electronic documents formats into the GS1 XML format. We demonstrate our approach through a case study involving a GS1 XML business document. We have implemented a prototype BDIS. We have evaluated and compared it with existing research and commercial tools for XML to relational schema conversion. The results show that it generates operational and simpler relational schemas for GS1 XML documents. In conclusion, the proposed framework enables SMEs to engage effectively in electronic business.

在企業對企業電子商務整合中，資料之間異質性以及系統間的互通性是最重要的議題之一。在整合過程中，我們必須考慮網路協定的整合、交易伙伴的整合、商業流程的整合以及商業文件的整合。一個電子商務標準通常會定義這些範圍，但是，電子商務標準都是定義語法部份而較少定義語意部份。在企業對企業電子商務整合過程當中，我們應該調解在商業訊息、商業字彙及資料字典中的語意衝突。 本體論是語意網的關鍵技術，本體論可以呈現出一個領域中語意，並且能夠推論。我們使用本體論的技術解決企業對企業電子商務整合的問題。我們提出了一個以本體論為基礎的方法來分析並研發一個企業對企業電子商務整合應用。透過使用企業對企業電子商務的本體，我們希望可以能夠了解及重覆使用企業對企業電子商務領域的知識。 / Heterogeneity and interoperability are the main issues in B2B integration. We have to consider the integration of different exchange protocols, trading partners, business processes, and business documents. A B2B standard usually specifies those integration dimensions. However, B2B standards are syntactic rather than semantic. B2B integration should conciliate the semantic conflicts between business messages, vocabularies, and data dictionary. Ontology is the key technology enables Semantic Web. Ontology can reason easier and represent the semantic of a domain. We believe that using ontology technology can solve the B2B integration issues. We propose an ontology-based approach to analyze and develop B2B integration model. By using the B2B ontologies, we hope to reuse and understand the domain knowledge.