A Framework for Managing the Complexity of Business Document Integration

The electronic exchange of business documents is an often communicated desire by enterprises and the public sector. Electronic business is currently mainly hindered by unresolved interoperability issues and a lack of tool support. Additionally, computer aided document exchange is cost intensive at the beginning and thus discourages small and medium-sized companies to adapt to new technologies. The contribution of this paper is to present suitable tool support and methods to manage the complexity of business document integration. Our modeling tool is based on UN/CEFACT's (United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business) Core Components Technical Specification allowing for platform independent, conceptual business document models. On these models further integration operations can be performed.