The full potential of the web as a medium for electronic commerce can be realized only when multiple partners in a supply chain can route information among themselves in a seamless way. Commerce on the Internet is still far from being "friction-free" because business partners cannot exchange information about their business processes in an automated manner. In this paper, we propose the design for an eXchangeable Routing Language (XRL) using XML syntax. XML (eXtendible Markup Language) is a means for trading partners to exchange business data electronically. The novel contribution of our work is to show how XML can also be used to describe workflow process schemas to support flexible routing of documents in the Internet environment. The design of XRL is grounded in Petri nets, which is a wellknown formalism. By using this formalism, it is possible to analyze correctness and performance of workflows described in XRL. Architectures to facilitate inter-operation through loose and tight integration are also discussed. Examples illustrate how this approach can be used for implementing interorganizational electronic commerce applications. As a proof of concept we have also developed XRL/flower, a prototype implementation of a workflow management system based on XRL.

We are interested in supporting multi-agent contracting, in which customer agents solicit the resources and capabilities of other, self-interested agents in order to accomplish their goals. Goals may

The new millennium is characterized by speed and distribution in every aspect of most business and organization undertaking. Organizations are challenged to bring ideas and concepts to products and services in an ever-increasing pace. Companies distributed by space, time and capabilities come together to deliver products and solutions for which there is any need in the global marketplace.

Existing electronic markets in the open network Internet often show a lack of security and fairness. New forms of trading are just coming up and the variety of different market structures and digital goods we will probably see in the future is yet unthinkable. Therefore, an infrastructure for future electronic markets has to support the realization of different market structures by providing secure and fair services in a transparent way and to allow dynamic changes of market structures 1. For example it should allow that the market structure changes from an auction to a direct search market on the fly. In this work we first elaborate an electronic market model and use it to describe how an open infrastructure for electronic markets should be realized. Finally we introduce the project COPS (Commercial Protocols and Services) in which we realize an infrastructure for secure and fair electronic markets. 1

This report gives an overview of metadata management in general (Part I) and on the role of metadata for data warehousing (Part II). Because of the complexity and extensive applicability of metadata, a compact, precise definition of the notion may hardly be provided. Therefore, we explain metadata by illustrating the use and the forms it may take within various application areas. In the case of data warehousing, we present a classification of metadata along certain dimensions and we discuss significant aspects of metadata management that have to be considered for the construction of a data warehouse system. Furthermore, this report provides a comprehensive survey and analysis of the state of the art of metadata management in industry and research. The most important standards for representation and interchange of metadata, commercial products and research projects are presented and discussed (as far as the available information allows) for both, the general case and the part...

Security and fairness in business transactions are basic requirements demanded by any participant in electronic markets. In this paper we propose COPS as an infrastructure for building adaptable electronic markets with main focus on security and fairness and MOSS as a methodology for analysing and modelling the security semantics of business transactions. Both are necessary to control the risks involved in dealing (trading) with untrusted parties in an open electronic commerce environment. We address the phases information, negotiation and execution of a business transaction and discuss security requirements which in the past were recognised as being very important for electronic market participants but had only received limited or little attention in the electronic commerce research community. 1

Data warehousing and electronic-commerce are two of the most rapidly expanding fields in recent information technologies. In this paper, we discuss the design of data warehouses for e-commerce environment. We discuss requirement analysis, logical design, and physical design issues in e-commerce environments. We have collected an extensive set of interesting OLAP queries for e-commerce environments, and classified them into categories. Based on these OLAP queries, we illustrate our design with data warehouse bus architecture, dimension table structures, a base star schema, and an aggregation star schema. We finally present various physical design considerations for implementing the dimensional models. We believe that our collection of OLAP queries and dimensional models would be very useful in developing any real-world data warehouses in e-commerce environments.

Abstract. Information Technology has changed our life and society already to such an extent that even our visions cannot exist without technology and its applications. And this change is accelerating. The Web and the related ecommerce phenomena – as Web based e-commerce – is just the “latest” example of this development. But with respect to e-commerce we should distinguish two things: the (today disappointed) expectations with the related “hype”, and that what really happens. However, this raises several serious difficulties: the problem to identify the current stage of development, the definition of the phenomena we speak about, and finally, what does this mean for the (near) future. Thus, this contribution raises more questions than providing answers. In doing so, I will use the travel and tourism industry as an example. And this highlights one important aspect we shouldn’t forget: Fun. 1.

Among other areas electronic commerce includes the fields of electronic markets and workflow management. Workflow management systems are usually used to specify and manage inter- and intra-organisational business processes. Although workflow management techniques are capable to specify and conduct at least parts of market transactions, these techniques are not or very rarely used for this purpose yet. In both fields users demand security and integrity to protect for example their privacy, their property rights or digital payments. To satisfy these security demands a variety of existing security services, mechanisms, protocols, and organisational measures are existent and may be used. At one hand side, to encourage using these techniques it is necessary to have a tool which enables a firm’s executive to formulate market transactions security demands at a high abstraction level. On the other hand executing market transactions needs a more formal, machine readable description of the transaction and its security requirements. In this paper we present a methodology to specify secure protocols, which are usable to automatically conduct business processes as well as market transactions. 1

ABSTRACT: Customer relationship management is an integral component of business strategy for on-line service providers. This paper investigates the aspects of on-line transactions in electronic retailing that are most likely to satisfy or dissatisfy customers, thereby increasing or decreasing the likelihood of building and maintaining relationships with them. For this study, 513 respondents reported behaviors, perceptions, beliefs, events, features, characteristics, attributes, and situations that expressed their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with electronic service encounters. Content analysis of these encounters yielded three meta-categories, six categories, and 33 subcategories of customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction with on-line service providers. The findings suggested that three major categories are robust even in the electronic context of the Internet. The antecedents identified were relevant both to product-related services (e.g., books, apparel) and to pure services (e.g., on-line banking, on-line stock trading). The study found that the characteristics and behaviors of customer-contact employees play an important role in on-line service encounters. It also revealed a percentage decrease in satisfactory incidents, a percentage increase in unsatisfactory incidents, and a percentage increase in unsatisfactory