Abstract
In 1998, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) suggested Extensible Markup Language (XML) specification 1.0 as a kind of markup language standard designed for the Internet. From then on, XML, with its interoperability, has been introduced to e-Business. As it turns out, XML is likely to replace Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) as a new data interchange standard. However, since many extended industrial XML specifications, including vertical and horizontal industrial standards such as RossettaNet, HL7 and OAGIS, are published, the diversity of XML formats increases the difficulty in XML-based data exchange. Companies may have to introduce several XML extended industrial standards at the same time to facilitate e-Business. This action leads to growing efforts in translating various XML-based business documents and increasing complexity involving e-Business. In order to solve these problems, the purpose of the thesis is to study a methodology that can provide enterprises with an easily-introduced environment for XML-based data exchange by using an “any-to-any” and open XML-based data exchange framework, combined with web-based registry and mapping services. Moreover, the specifications of horizontal standards, such as ebXML, are introduced to reinforce the completeness. The steps are as follows. Firstly, in the “any-to-any” translation, an intermediary standard is chosen for reducing the frequency of translation. As a result, the formats of business documents can be translated into other formats via the intermediary standard. Secondly, registry services allow companies to participate in trading groups, and share their business process and information with external trading partners. Thirdly, mapping services allow users to easily map their business documents to an intermediary standard by parsing XML schemata and providing various mapping methods. As such, Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) can be generated automatically for quick and repeated translation, and the structure can be integrated as a public e-Business framework with registry, mapping, and exchange services.