Description Logics : a Modelling Support for Automatic Cataloguing in E-Commerce

Currently, the electronic commerce (E-Commerce) knows an important growth, which results in the emergence of many commercial sites on the Internet network. The web sites of the providers propose to the consumers offers of products or services in electronic catalogues. Ontologies are generally used for the purpose of modelling the catalogues. In order to facilitate to the users the search of products or services, the commercial companies that are offering the same type of products gather their sites in electronic market places (E-Market Places) in which the transactions are guided by the use of a global catalogue that contains all the offers. We analyse in this paper the problems related to the E-Commerce, particularly the management problem of the electronic catalogues in the E-Market Places. For modelling the electronic catalogues, we propose a logical approach, based on Description Logics (DLs) issued from knowledge representation. We show how the reasoning services provided by knowledge representation systems based on DLs can support the operations of automatic cataloguing.