Web Services for Transmitting Product Information

in the Context of Business-to-Business Integration

Stefan Kuhlins and Bjørn-Henrik Zink

University of MannheimChair of Information Systems III

Prof. Dr. Dr. Martin SchaderGermany

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IntroductionIntroduction IntroductionIntroduction

Web Services and The Semantic WebWeb Services and The Semantic Web Web Services and The Semantic WebWeb Services and The Semantic Web

Conclusion and Future WorkConclusion and Future Work Conclusion and Future WorkConclusion and Future Work

Agenda

IntroductionIntroduction IntroductionIntroduction

Web Services and The Semantic WebWeb Services and The Semantic Web Web Services and The Semantic WebWeb Services and The Semantic Web

Conclusion and Future WorkConclusion and Future Work Conclusion and Future WorkConclusion and Future Work

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Online Shopping

Example A consumer has decided to purchase a

Sony DSC-P10 digital camera

Information gathering A known vendor URL

Example www.amazon.com

Search engine Example www.google.com

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Search Engines

Search for Sony DSC-P10 136,000 hits

Problems Information flooding Not all offers are found

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Comparing Prices Manually very cumbersome Suboptimal result

Automation

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Price Comparisons

Providing consumers with an overview of price and availability of products

Rely on an exchange of information between distributed heterogeneous information systems

Desirable to find a solution that automatically discovers online shops and integrates with them

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Online Shops

Reach as many potential customers as possible because this raises the chances of selling products

Listing product information at price comparers

Relatively modest IT budget

Find an inexpensive way to make price comparers aware of them and come across a technical solution that does not require highly sophisticated technical skills

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Information Extraction

Wrappers Parse and extract information directly from Web

pages When HTML pages change the wrapper must be

adjusted manually to avoid malfunction

XML based Web services Enable data aggregation and integration of

heterogeneous information systems over the Internet through open standards that are widely supported

Despite of semantic advances, such as, XML Schema, RDF, OWL, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, and ebXML, it cannot be certain that software routines can determine the intended interpretation of Web services operations

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Example for non-standardized WS

Web service 1 Products search (String regex) { … }

Web service 2 Books getBooks (String author, String title) {

… }

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Research Idea

A multitude of standard interface descriptions that other business applications can reuse

Support for automatic implementation, deployment, discovery, and execution

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Elm@r Project

Electronic Market

http://elektronischer-markt.de/http://projekt.wifo.uni-mannheim.de/elmar/

Reference implementation of the shopinfo.xml-Standard

Project is aided by the „Dieter Schwarz Stiftung“

At present, 245 participating shops and 750,000 products

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Direct Registration Online Shops register directly at price comparers,

product search engines, shop directories, and so on

Shop data is submitted every time Name, URL, E-Mail, Logo, …

Exchange of product information is handled individually

…

Shop information

Online ShopOnline ShopOnline ShopOnline Shop

Price Comparer 1Price Comparer 1 Price Comparer 1Price Comparer 1

Price Comparer 2Price Comparer 2 Price Comparer 2Price Comparer 2

Price Comparer nPrice Comparer n Price Comparer nPrice Comparer n

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shopinfo.xml Shop file

Contains shop data Describes access to product information

Download from online shop web sites http://www.imaging-one.de/shopinfo.xml

…

Shop file

Online ShopOnline ShopOnline ShopOnline Shop

Price Comparer 1Price Comparer 1Price Comparer 1Price Comparer 1

Price Comparer 2Price Comparer 2Price Comparer 2Price Comparer 2

Price Comparer nPrice Comparer nPrice Comparer nPrice Comparer n

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Service Oriented Architecture

WSDL Contains master data Describes access to product information

Online ShopOnline ShopOnline ShopOnline Shop

RegistryRegistryRegistryRegistry

Price ComparerPrice ComparerPrice ComparerPrice Comparer

WSDL

1. register 2. find

3. communicate

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IntroductionIntroduction IntroductionIntroduction

Web Services and The Semantic WebWeb Services and The Semantic Web Web Services and The Semantic WebWeb Services and The Semantic Web

Conclusion and Future WorkConclusion and Future Work Conclusion and Future WorkConclusion and Future Work

Agenda

Web Services and The Semantic WebWeb Services and The Semantic Web Web Services and The Semantic WebWeb Services and The Semantic Web

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Web Services

A software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network.

It has a machine-processable WSDL interface.

Other systems interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its description using SOAP messages, conveyed using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) with an XML serialization in conjunction with other Web-related standards.

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Web Services Process

Define semantics and service description

Involved parties become known to each other

Implement service description and semantics

Exchange SOAP messages

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Semantics and Service Description

Direct communication

Provider publishes service description and semantics

Requester publishes service description and semantics

Industry or academic organization publishes service description and semantics

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Product Web Services Interface

public interface ShopSearchServices extends Remote {

SearchResponse EANSearch(EANSearchRequest esr)throws RemoteException, SearchServicesException;

SearchResponse ProductSearch(ProductSearchRequest psr)throws RemoteException, SearchServicesException;

SearchResponse KeywordSearch(KeywordSearchRequest ksr)throws RemoteException, SearchServicesException;

SearchResponse PromotionSearch(String id)throws RemoteException, SearchServicesException;

}

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Web Services Discovery

Manual Discovery Obtaining the information directly from a

provider Simple Lack of automation

Discovery Mechanisms ebXML and UDDI registries Automatic discovery Online shops must be acquainted with the

UDDI or ebXML standards

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Online Shop Solution

Automatic Source Code Generation Automatically generate Java source files from the

WSDL definition

Integrating the Backend System Integrate backend systems into the generated source

code

Compiling and Deploying the Web service Compilation and deployment using available tools

Publishing the Web service Using an UDDI registry, the Online Shop can

associate the ServiceBinding with a WSDL tModelKey

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Price Comparer Solution

Search Registry for WSDL compatible Web services Querying registries to find suitable Web

services using a tModelKey

Generate Client-Stubs Client-stubs are generated automatically

from a WSDL file

Invoke Web services Request Online shops by their service

endpoints

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Summary

StandardWSDL

Document

Online Shop

Price Comparer

UDDI / ebXML

2a

1.

3. 4.

2b

5.

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IntroductionIntroduction IntroductionIntroduction

Web Services and The Semantic WebWeb Services and The Semantic Web Web Services and The Semantic WebWeb Services and The Semantic Web

Conclusion and Future WorkConclusion and Future Work Conclusion and Future WorkConclusion and Future Work

Agenda

Conclusion and Future WorkConclusion and Future Work Conclusion and Future WorkConclusion and Future Work

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Conclusion and Future Work Automatic implementation, deployment,

discovery, and execution

The described process can be applied in any business scenario that relies on information transmission between multiple providers and requesters

Demands involvement of information providers and requires suitable WSDL documents

A comprehensive comparison work including the latest development of Web services solutions in the industry will be addressed in the future

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Outlook

Online Shops Improved visibility of their offerings

Price Comparers Increased number of integrated online shops Provide more and better information

Users Enhanced market transparency Find what they are searching for

Improved Online ShoppingImproved Online ShoppingImproved Online ShoppingImproved Online Shopping

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Thanks for your attention