Towards a global business document reference ontology

In the field of business document standardization a multitude of different standardization efforts exist. Unfortunately. most of the developed standards are designed for a specific application domain or industry and do not consider cross-standard interoperability. Tins results in several incompatible standard definitions Without the provision of a common semantical basis for business document definitions. cross-domain interoperability cannot be achieved. In this paper we provide a methodology for building a global reference ontology based on the Core Components Technical Specification (CCTS) and Web Ontology Language (OWL) Using our approach a common semantic business document basis is developed. New document definitions may be derived from tins basis and existing document definitions may be aligned to it. Using our 'derivation-by-restriction' mechanism, instances derived from a common semantical basis are interoperable to each other Thus, mapping mechanisms between different standard definitions may be implemented in an easier and semantically correct manner