ISO/IEC 15944-4:2015
(Main)Information technology — Business operational view — Part 4: Business transaction scenarios — Accounting and economic ontology
Information technology — Business operational view — Part 4: Business transaction scenarios — Accounting and economic ontology
ISO/IEC 15944-4:2015 provides a set of UML class diagrams and conceptual explanations that circumscribe the Open-edi Business Transaction Ontology (OeBTO). It explains the mechanics of a business transaction state machine, the procedural component of an OeBTO, and the (internal) constraint component of OeBTO, its repository for business rules. ISO/IEC 15944-4:2015 addresses collaborations among independent trading partners as defined in ISO/IEC 15944‑1. ISO/IEC 15944-4:2015 applies to both binary collaborations (buyer and seller) and mediated collaborations (buyer, seller, third-party). The ontological features described herein propose standards only for the Business Operational View (BOV), that is, the business aspects of business transactions as they are defined in ISO/IEC 15944‑1.
Technologies de l'information — Vue opérationelle d'affaires — Partie 4: Scénarios de transactions d'affaires — Ontologie comptable et économique
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Standards Content (Sample)
INTERNATIONAL ISO/IEC
STANDARD 15944-4
Second edition
2015-04-01
Information technology — Business
Operational View —
Part 4:
Business transaction scenarios —
Accounting and economic ontology
Technologies de l’information — Vue opérationelle d’affaires —
Partie 4: Scénarios de transactions d’affaires — Ontologie comptable
et économique
Reference number
ISO/IEC 15944-4:2015(E)
©
ISO/IEC 2015
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ISO/IEC 15944-4:2015(E)
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ISO/IEC 15944-4:2015(E)
Contents Page
Foreword .iv
0 Introduction .v
1 Scope . 1
2 Normative references . 1
3 Terms and definitions . 1
4 Symbols and abbreviations .12
5 The declarative component of an OeBTO — Primitive and derived data classes .12
5.1 Person and economic resources .12
5.2 The normative data categories for a business transaction involving an economic
exchange: resources, events, and Persons plus their fundamental relationships .17
5.3 Addition of business event to basic exchange pattern .19
5.4 Extension of the OeBTO into types .20
5.5 Locations and claims .22
5.6 Adding commitments to economic exchanges .22
5.7 Business transactions with contracts .24
5.8 Typifying agreements and business transactions .26
6 The procedural component of an OeBTO — Business transaction state machines .28
6.1 Relating ontological components to the Open-edi business transaction phases.28
7 The constraint component of an OeBTO — Incorporating business rules into
business transactions .40
7.1 Business rules and Open-edi constraints .40
7.2 OeBTO constraint examples .41
7.3 Summary .41
Annex A (normative) Consolidated list of terms and definitions with cultural adaptability: ISO
English and ISO French language equivalency .43
Annex B (informative) REA Model Background .63
Annex C (normative) Business Transaction Model (BTM): Two classes of constraints .69
Bibliography .72
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ISO/IEC 15944-4:2015(E)
Foreword
ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (the International Electrotechnical
Commission) form the specialized system for worldwide standardization. National bodies that are
members of ISO or IEC participate in the development of International Standards through technical
committees established by the respective organization to deal with particular fields of technical
activity. ISO and IEC technical committees collaborate in fields of mutual interest. Other international
organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO and IEC, also take part in the
work. In the field of information technology, ISO and IEC have established a joint technical committee,
ISO/IEC JTC 1.
The procedures used to develop this document and those intended for its further maintenance are
described in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1. In particular the different approval criteria needed for
the different types of document should be noted. This document was drafted in accordance with the
editorial rules of the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2 (see www.iso.org/directives).
Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject
of patent rights. ISO and IEC shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.
Details of any patent rights identified during the development of the document will be in the Introduction
and/or on the ISO list of patent declarations received (see www.iso.org/patents).
Any trade name used in this document is information given for the convenience of users and does not
constitute an endorsement.
For an explanation on the meaning of ISO specific terms and expressions related to conformity
assessment, as well as information about ISO’s adherence to the WTO principles in the Technical Barriers
to Trade (TBT) see the following URL: Foreword - Supplementary information
The committee responsible for this document is ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology, SC 32, Data
management and interchange.
This second edition cancels and replaces the first edition (ISO/IEC 15944-4:2007), of which it constitutes
a minor revision.
ISO/IEC 15944 consists of the following parts, under the general title Information technology — Business
Operational View:
— Part 1: Operational aspects of Open-edi for implementation
— Part 2: Registration of scenarios and their components as business objects
— Part 4: Business transaction scenarios — Accounting and economic ontology
— Part 5: Identification and referencing of requirements of jurisdictional domains as sources of external
constraints
— Part 6: Technical introduction to e-Business modelling [Technical Report]
— Part 7: eBusiness vocabulary
— Part 8: Identification of privacy requirements as external constraints on business transactions
— Part 9: Business transaction traceability framework for commitment exchange
— Part 10: IT-enabled coded domains as semantic components in business transactions
— Part 20: Linking business operational view to functional service view to functional service view
The following parts are under preparation:
— Part 11: Descriptive techniques for foundational modelling in Open-edi
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ISO/IEC 15944-4:2015(E)
0 Introduction
0.1 Purpose and overview
This work is motivated with important ideas from the ISO Open-edi specifications as represented
in ISO/IEC 15944-1. In ISO/IEC 15944-1 and in some of its earlier foundational expositions, such as
ISO/IEC 14662, there were important concepts defined and interrelated such as business transaction,
fundamental activities of a business transaction, commitment, Person, role, scenario, and others. A need
for relating all of these concepts in a formal framework for the Open-edi work is apparent.
This is a question of ontology: a formal specification of the concepts that exist in some domain of interest
[17]
and the relationships that hold them . In this case, the domains of interest are those that encompass
Open-edi activities, that is, law, economics, and accounting in an extended sense, not the internal
accounting of one particular firm, but the accountabilities of each of the participants in a market-based
business transaction.
Ontologies are generally classified as either upper-level ontologies, dealing with generalized phenomena
like time, space, and causality, or domain ontologies, dealing with phenomena in a specific field like
military operations, manufacturing, medical practice, or business. The economic and accounting
ontology being used in electronic business eXtended Markup Language (ebXML), in the UN/CEFACT
modelling methodology, and E-Commerce Integration Meta-Framework (ECIMF) work is entitled the
1)
Resource-Event-Agent (REA) ontology . REA is used here as an ontological framework for specifying
the concepts and relationships involved in business transactions and scenarios in the Open-edi sense
of those terms. The resulting framework is titled the Open-edi business transaction ontology (OeBTO).
The REA ontology is actually an elementary set of concepts derived from basic definitions in accounting
and economics. These concepts are illustrated most simply with a UML class diagram. See Figure 1, which
illustrates the simple Resource-Event-Agent structure that gives REA its name. A business transaction
or exchange has two REA constellations joined together, noting that the two parties to a simple market
transfer expect to receive something of value in return when they trade. For example, a seller, who
delivers a product to a buyer, expects a requiting cash payment in return.
Figure 1 — Basic economic primitives of the Open-edi ontology
There are some specific points of synergy between the REA ontology and the ISO Open-edi specifications
as represented in ISO/IEC 15944-1.
ISO/IEC 15944-1, 3.9 defines commitment as “the making or accepting of a right, obligation, liability, or
responsibility by a Person.”. Commitment is a central concept in REA. Commitments are promises to
execute future economic events, for example, to fulfill an order by executing a delivery event.
ISO/IEC 15944-1, 6.1.3, Rule 1 states: “Business transactions require both information exchange and
commitment exchange.” REA firmly agrees with and helps give definition to this assertion. Reciprocal
commitments are exchanged in REA via economic contracts that govern exchanges, while information
1) Elements of the REA ontology as they are used in other standards work are explained in Annex B.
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exchange is tracked via business events that govern the state transitions of business transaction entities
that represent various economic phenomena.
ISO/IEC 15944-1, 6.3.1, Rule 39 states: “Conceptually a business transaction can be considered to
be constructed from a set of fundamental activities. They are planning, identification, negotiation,
actualization, and post-actualization.” For REA, actualization is the execution of economic events that
fulfill commitments. Planning and identification involve business partners with types of economic
resources, events, and persons, while negotiation is finalized by an economic contract which is a bundle
of commitments. The UN/CEFACT Business Process Group has also defined negotiation protocols that
assist in forming commitments. The Open-edi set of activities and the REA economic concepts will
help each other tie together all the activities into a cohesive business transaction, and then unite that
transaction definition with its related information models.
Finally, with regard to the preliminary agreement between Open-edi and REA, the two major sets of ideas
that characterize the Open-edi work, the specification of business transactions and the configuration
of scenarios, correspond well at the aggregate level to what the REA ontology calls the accountability
infrastructure and the policy infrastructure. A business transaction specifies, in a descriptive sense,
actual business events of what has occurred or has been committed to. Conversely, a scenario is more
prescriptive: it configures what could be or should be. The realm of both descriptions and prescriptions
is important both to Open-edi and REA, and they can work well in developing standards for each.
0.2 Definition of Open-edi Business Transaction Ontology (OeBTO)
According to the most widely accepted definition from Tom Gruber (1993), an ontology is a formal,
2)
explicit specification of a shared conceptualization. The individual components of this meaning are
each worth examining.
— formal = machine-readable;
— explicit specification = concepts, properties, relations, constraints, and axioms are explicitly
defined;
— of a shared = consensus knowledge;
— conceptualization = abstract model of some phenomenon in the real world.
At present, the REA model is certainly an explicit specification of a shared conceptualization of economic
phenomena in the accounting community. A formal, machine-readable specification is not proposed in
this part of ISO/IEC 15944; however, such extensions may follow in other standards work.
This part of ISO/IEC 15944 focuses on integrating the Gruber definition of ontology with a REA-
based approach. It does so from an accounting and economic ontology perspective within an Open-
edi Reference Model context. This is achieved through the introduction of the concept (or construct) of
“Open-edi Business Transaction Ontology (OeBTO)”, which is defined as follows:
formal, rule-based specification and definition of the concepts pertaining to business transactions and
scenarios and the relationships that hold among those concepts.
0.3 Use of the “independent” and “trading partner” perspective in the Open-edi ontology work
In normal business use, the naming perspective for the ontological primitives would be that of the
entrepreneur or of one of the two trading partners engaged in collaborative commerce. The other trading
partner would ordinarily have a mirror-image view. Thus, a sale, a cash receipt, or a resource inflow
for a particular entrepreneur would become a purchase, a cash disbursement, or a resource outflow
for a corresponding trading partner. From this perspective, business events and their accompanying
economic phenomena would be modeled twice, once in the database of each trading partner. However,
for Open-edi purposes, or for that matter for any other independent modeling of business collaborations
like the Business Requirement View BRV level of the UN/CEFACT modeling methodology, this redundancy
2) See also the expert contribution by Dr. Jake V. Knoppers in the JTC1/SC32/WG1 document N0220, “Draft
Definition for Open-edi Business Transaction Ontology (OeBTO)”, 2002-05-06.
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is not acceptable because it allows the states of the two representations to become inconsistent. This
3)
difference in naming perspective is explained below and illustrated in Figure 2.
Figure 2 — Different views of business collaboration
Figure 2 illustrates three independent value chains for three different enterprises. Each company has
a connected network of business processes that takes its initial input of resources (called factor inputs
for their production functions) and transforms them via cumulative flows of goods, services, rights,
and/or cash into an output for that firm’s downstream customers. For Open-edi collaboration modeling,
these internal processes are not relevant until a resource flow crosses enterprise boundaries, as is
illustrated for Enterprise #2 which accepts materials from Enterprise #1 and which delivers materials
to Enterprise #3 (most probably in both cases for cash payments in return). The two dotted lines with
double-headed arrows show these inter-enterprise events.
The independent or collaboration perspective of resource flows is anchored on the view of the eye
outside of Enterprise #2. This view sees both exchanges as conceptually similar with flows of materials
being requited by flows of funds. Such a perspective is quite different from that of the eye inside of
Enterprise #2, which sees the flow between Enterprise #1 and Enterprise #2 as a “purchase” and the
flow between Enterprise #2 and Enterprise #3 as a “sale”. Note that an eye inside of Enterprise #1 (not
shown on diagram) would have modeled the “purchase” of Enterprise #2 as a “sale” of Enterprise #1,
hence the redundancy and the inevitable inconsistency.
Business process modeling can take either of the perspectives shown by the eyes of Figure 2, but the
independent perspective is clearly the choice for Open-edi. This leads to the concept of a business
3) Figure 2 was contributed by the Japanese delegation to SC 32, led by Katsuhiro Morita, during the Open-edi
group meeting in Victoria in October 2001. {See further, the JTC1/SC32/WG1 document N1 N0190 “AIW15944-
4, Information technology — Business Agreement Descriptive techniques Part 4: Open-edi Ontology”, 2001-10-22}
(Morita 2001). Some conceptual changes and naming conventions have been added since that first contribution.
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ISO/IEC 15944-4:2015(E)
4)
collaboration that is illustrated in Figure 3 . Most generally, there is a value exchange between two
Persons, with one assuming the role of a “buyer” (has money, desires goods, services, and/or rights)
and the other assuming the role of a “seller” (has goods, services, and/or rights, desires money). It is
also possible to anchor the independent view on time, with one event being the initiating flow and the
requiting event being the responding flow. For internal database purposes of corporate accountability,
“trading partner perspective” terms are directly derivable from “independent perspective” terms.
Figure 3 — Concept of a business collaboration
0.4 The “Open-edi Business Transaction Ontology” (OeBTO)
“Definition of Open-edi Business Transaction Ontology (OeBTO)” and “Use of ‘independent’ and ‘trading
partner’ perspective in the Open-edi ontology work” have suggested
— that the components of the REA domain ontology model are sufficiently well-defined, stable, and
well-known that they can clearly serve as the basis for an ontological specification of the concepts
involved in collaborative exchanges between trading partners, and
— that the components of that model must be viewed from the outside perspective of a modeler
viewing the economic phenomena independently.
Because the primitive economic terms are being adopted here for use with the operational aspects
of Open-edi from ISO/IEC 15944-1, the ontology to be defined will be termed the “Open-edi Business
Transaction Ontology” (OeBTO). Its definition is
formal, rule-based specification and definition of the concepts pertaining to business transactions and
scenarios and the relationships that hold among these concepts
From the definitional foundations of both ISO/IEC 15944-1 and the REA model, it follows that the OeBTO
will follow these five principles:
— as a business transaction ontology, a distinguishing characteristic of OeBTO is that in addition to
information exchange, it incorporates commitment exchange among autonomous Persons;
— an OeBTO requires the use of clear and pre-defined rules, principles, and guidelines (see
ISO/IEC 15944-1, 5.1);
— an OeBTO is neutral in terms of technology, representation, and application;
— the scope of an OeBTO covers all areas of business transactions (public/private, industry sectors,
international, regional, etc.);
— the semantics of the concepts represented in an OeBTO are explicitly specified and constrained.
4) Figure 3 was contributed by the Japanese delegation to SC 32, led by Katsuhiro Morita, during the Open-edi
group meeting in Seoul, in May 2002.
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0.5 Organization and description of this part of ISO/IEC 15944
Clause 1 and Clause 2 provide scope and normative references for OeBTO. The basic OeBTO definitions
are first enumerated in Clause 3, while Clause 4 provides a table of symbols and abbreviations. Clause 5
provides the declarative substance for this part of ISO/IEC 15944, which is a set of UML class diagrams
and conceptual explanations that circumscribe the Open-edi Business Transaction Ontology. Clause 6
explains the mechanics of a business transaction state machine, which is the procedural component of
an OeBTO, while Clause 7 explains the (internal) constraint component of OeBTO, which is its repository
for business rules.
At the end of this part of ISO/IEC 15944 are some helpful Annexes that provide elaboration on the points
raised in the main body. Normative Annex A is a consolidated list of all the terms and definitions used
in this part of ISO/IEC 15944 in both ISO English and ISO French. The other normative annex is Annex C,
which is common to ISO/IEC 15944-2, ISO/IEC 15944-4, ISO/IEC 15944-5, and ISO/IEC 15944-8. Annex B
is informative text providing more detailed background information on the REA Model. This part of
ISO/IEC 15944 concludes with a bibliography.
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INTERNATIONAL STANDARD ISO/IEC 15944-4:2015(E)
Information technology — Business Operational View —
Part 4:
Business transaction scenarios — Accounting and
economic ontology
1 Scope
This part of ISO/IEC 15944 provides a set of UML class diagrams and conceptual explanations that
circumscribe the Open-edi Business Transaction Ontology (OeBTO). It explains the mechanics of a
business transaction state machine, the procedural component of an OeBTO, and the (internal) constraint
component of OeBTO, its repository for business rules.
This part of ISO/IEC 15944 addresses collaborations among independent trading partners as defined in
ISO/IEC 15944-1. This part of ISO/IEC 15944 applies to both binary collaborations (buyer and seller) and
mediated collaborations (buyer, seller, third-party). The ontological features described herein propose
standards only for the Business Operational View (BOV), that is, the business aspects of business
transactions as they are defined in ISO/IEC 15944-1.
2 Normative references
The following documents, in whole or in part, are normatively referenced in this document and are
indispensable for its application. For dated references, only the edition cited applies. For undated
references, the latest edition of the referenced document (including any amendments) applies.
NOTE One or more terms and definitions of the referenced International Standards listed below are used in
Clause 3 Terms and definitions.
ISO/IEC 6523-1:1998, Information technology — Structure for the identification of organizations and
organization parts — Part 1: Identification of organization identification schemes
ISO/IEC 11179-3:2003, Information technology — Metadata registries (MDR) — Part 3: Registry metamodel
and basic attributes
ISO/IEC 14662:2010, Information technology — Open-edi reference model
ISO/IEC 15944-1:2011, Information technology — Business Operational View — Part 1: Operational aspects
of Open-edi for implementation
ISO/IEC 15944-5:2008, Information technology — Business Operational View — Part 5: Identification and
referencing of requirements of jurisdictional domains as sources of external constraints
3 Terms and definitions
For the purposes of this document, the following terms and definitions apply.
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ISO/IEC 15944-4:2015(E)
3.1
agent
Person (3.52) acting for another Person (3.52) in a clearly specified capacity in the context of a business
transaction (3.8)
Note 1 to entry: Excluded here are agents as “automatons” (or robots, bobots, etc.). In ISO/IEC 14662, “automatons”
are recognized and provided for but as part of the Functional Services View (FSV) where they are defined as an
“Information Processing Domain (IPD)”.
[SOURCE: ISO/IEC 15944-1:2011, 3.1]
3.2
attribute
characteristic of an object (3.42) or entity (3.32)
[SOURCE: ISO/IEC 11179-3:2003, 3.1.3]
3.3
bilateral transaction
sub-type of a business transaction (3.8) where the Persons (3.52) include only the buyer (3.11) and the
seller (3.61), or alternatively other Persons (3.52) acting as agents (3.1) for the buyer (3.11) and/or seller
(3.61)
3.4
business
series of processes (3.53), each having a clearly understood purpose, involving more than one Person
(3.52), realized through the exchange of recorded information (3.56) and directed towards some mutually
agreed upon goal, extending over a period of time
[SOURCE: ISO/IEC 14662:2010, 3.2]
3.5
business event
occurrence in time that partners (3.51) to a business transaction (3.8) wish to monitor or control
Note 1 to entry: Business events are the workflow tasks that business partners need to accomplish to complete
a business transaction among themselves. As business events occur, they cause a business transaction to move
through its various phases of planning, identification, negotiation, actualization, and post-actualization.
Note 2 to entry: Occurrences in time can either: (a) be internal as mutually agreed to among the parties to a
business transaction and/or (b) reference some common publicly available and recognized date/time referencing
schema (e.g. one based on using ISO 8601 and/or ISO 19135 standards).
3.6
business location
geographic site where an economic event (3.25) is deemed to occur with its attendant transfer of an
economic resource (3.28) from one Person (3.52) to another
3.7
Business Operational View
BOV
perspective of business transactions (3.8) limited to those aspects regarding the making of business
decisions and commitments (3.13) among Persons (3.52), which are needed for the description of a
business transaction (3.8)
[SOURCE: ISO/IEC 14662:2010, 3.3]
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3.8
business transaction
predefined set of activities and/or processes of Persons (3.52) which is initiated by a Person (3.52) to
accomplish an explicitly shared business goal and terminated upon recognition of one of the agreed
conclusions by all the involved Persons (3.52), although some of the recognition may be implicit
[SOURCE: ISO/IEC 14662:2010, 3.4]
3.9
business transaction entity
computable representation of any real-world entity that participates, occurs, or is materialized during
a business transaction (3.8)
3.10
business transaction entity type
abstract specification of a business transaction entity (3.9), detailing its recommended characteristics,
its recommended methods, and its recommended life-cycle states
Note 1 to entry: A business transaction entity type will usually specify the types of business events that cause a
business transaction entity of this type to proceed through its different states as the business transaction itself
progresses through its phases of planning, identification, negotiation, actualization and post-actualization.
3.11
buyer
Person (3.52) who aims to get possession of a good, service, and/or right through providing an acceptable
equivalent value, usually in terms of money, to the Person (3.52) providing such a good, service, and/or
right
[SOURCE: ISO/IEC 15944-1:2011, 3.8]
3.12
collaboration space
business activity space where an economic exchange (3.27) of valued resources is viewed independently
and not from the perspective of any business partner
...
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