Linked data for transaction based enterprise interoperability

Abstract

Interoperability is of major importance in B2B environments. Starting with EDI in the ‘80s, currently interoperability relies heavily on XMLbased standards. Although having great impact, still issues remain to be solved for improving B2B interoperability. These issues include lack of dynamics, cost of implementations, adoption and cross-industry exchange. Linked Data (part of the Semantic Web) technology, although originally not intended for the B2B domain, holds the promise of overcoming some of these issues. This paper explores the potential of linked data technology within a B2B context by introducing and studying six scenarios for combining from light to heavy weight ‘traditional’ standards with Linked Data technology. This research shows that using Linked Data technology has most potential for specifying semantics formally. This provides the ‘best of both worlds’ solution, in which legacy systems remain unaltered, and developers are supported in (semi) automated generation of transformation schema’s to overcome different standards.