Pro-active monitoring of electronic contracts

Abstract

Contracts between multiple business partners play an increasing role in a global economy where activities along the value chain are executed by independent yet co-operating companies. Information technology to enact a value chain is now being deployed in the form of ERP systems and Web services. However, there is little known how to formally check whether such an enactment is indeed fulfilling the contract between the parties. In this paper, we investigate which parts of a contract can be formalized to be automatically monitored. Our approach not only supports the detection of actual violations but also pro-active detection of imminent contract violations. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.