Semantic Contract Support for E-Business Processes

Traditional business transactions are established under well-defined contracts, agreed, explicitly or implicitly, by all the parties involved. To support such transactions in the Internet (and in the Web) it is necessary to characterize all of its aspects, such as agents, contracts, roles, relationships, interactions between partners, policies, etc. This paper presents the Contract Oriented Web Services Model (COWS) - a model for an appropriate environment for E-business dialogues, implemented using Web Services. COWS is based on well-defined contracts agreed upon by all concerned parties and incorporates various levels of applicable policies. Contracts may refer to other contracts and are valid within forae, which have default global policies. A prototype web environment supporting COWS has been implemented to test the concepts that extend the discovery process. All COWS models have been specified as ontologies, using Flora- 2.