Electronic contracting with COSMOS-how to establish, negotiate and execute electronic contracts on the Internet

Today, the Internet gains more and more attraction even for small companies to contact business partners and to automate cooperation between each other. However, the smaller the company the higher the relative setup costs that are required if the complete process of a commercial transaction is to be supported. We propose COSMOS as an Internet-based electronic contracting service that facilitates commercial partners with offer catalogues, a brokerage service, contract negotiation and signing as well as contract execution. The COSMOS architecture supports these functions in an integrated, unified way. The design and execution of contracts integrates patterns from the CORBA Joint Business Object Facility