Semantic Knowledge Integration for eBusiness Processes: An Ontological Analysis

eBusiness achieves business goals using information and knowledge exchange to enable execution of inter-organizational business activities and support decision making underlying these activities. Mechanisms for knowledge transparency through standardized knowledge representation, storage, use, and sharing are essential to realize these goals. This paper addresses of knowledge integration and management for inter-organizational eBusiness processes. Building on research in Semantic eBusiness, eBusiness Processes, and knowledge management, we present a semantic knowledge integration framework for eBusiness Processes. Primary contributions of this paper include ontological engineering and knowledge representation for distributed knowledge management in inter-organizational eBusiness processes, knowledge representation for semantic knowledge management, and transparent knowledge sharing for semantic eBusiness processes. A description logics model for knowledge representation of an eMarketplace eBusiness process is presented as an illustrative example.