Attribute Intelligence in Product Ontology

The product information is an essential component of e-commerce collaborations, especially in large-scale enterprise transactions. Clearly defined product information is a necessary foundation for effective collaborative business. Furthermore, the use of ontologies, as a method for formal description of concepts, enables semantically enriched product information, which can enhance the quality and effectiveness of business communications. A product ontology system contains all related information about the products and everything that may describe them. Product attributes, also known as properties, are the most important feature in the product information management, which characterize and describe the product. In this paper, we present methods to describe the products by including more detailed information about product attributes. In order to add more intelligence to the product ontology system, we study different types of attributes and different information that may be related to them, such as data type of the attribute, its unit of measurement, value recommendation, and attribute inheritance. We present the system by operational models, which can be used as a reference model in product ontology design.