Business Object Model for Consistent Purchase Order Interfaces
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current business transaction systems face challenges in exchanging information across different industries and business entities due to semantic differences and inconsistent interfaces, requiring human intervention and limiting automation in e-commerce processes.
Innovation Solution
A business object model is used to generate consistent interfaces across industries and business units, ensuring semantic consistency and enabling automated information exchange by defining business-related concepts and their relationships, allowing for the creation of consistent interfaces that can be used across heterogeneous systems.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If heterogeneous business entities use their own proprietary interfaces and semantics, then each business entity can maintain its own business logic and data formats, but information exchange between different business entities becomes difficult and requires human interaction
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a message choreography as an intermediary layer that mediates between heterogeneous business entities. This message choreography defines standardized message formats, fields, and semantics that enable automated information exchange without requiring business entities to change their internal interfaces. The message choreography acts as a universal language that translates between different business entity interfaces, resolving the contradiction between maintaining autonomy and enabling easy information exchange.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a universal message choreography framework that can serve multiple business entities across different industries and departments. This framework provides a common interface standard that works universally for purchase orders, sales orders, invoices, and other business documents, eliminating the need for custom integration for each business entity pair while preserving their individual business logic.
2Adaptability or versatility
If multiple industry-specific interfaces and standards are used, then each industry can have specialized functionality, but consistency between different standards is lacking and automation is limited
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the interface standard into hierarchical layers: a core message choreography framework that provides universal consistency, and industry-specific extensions that add specialized functionality. This segmentation allows different industries to maintain their specialized interfaces while relying on the common core framework for automated processing, thus achieving both consistency and specialization.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent adds a new dimension to interface design by introducing message choreography as a separate layer above traditional point-to-point interfaces. This dimensional change allows the system to maintain interface consistency through the choreography layer while permitting industry-specific variations at the application layer, resolving the contradiction between consistency and specialization.
3Loss of information
If human interaction is used to facilitate transactions between heterogeneous programs, then semantic differences can be resolved, but automation in e-commerce processes is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by pre-defining message choreographies with complete semantic definitions for all possible business scenarios. These pre-defined message templates include all necessary fields, data types, and validation rules, allowing automated systems to handle transactions without human intervention. The semantic accuracy is established in advance through the message choreography design, eliminating the need for human mediation during actual transactions.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent enables systems to serve themselves by implementing automated message validation, transformation, and routing based on the predefined message choreography. Business entities can independently send and receive messages using the standardized format, with automated error handling and semantic validation, eliminating the need for human operators to facilitate each transaction while maintaining high semantic accuracy.
Data Source
AI summary
A business object model, which reflects data that is used during a given business transaction, is utilized to generate interfaces. This business object model facilitates commercial transactions by providing consistent interfaces that are suitable for use across industries, across businesses, and across different departments within a business during a business transaction. Specifically, example business objects include PurchaseOrder ERP and PurchaseRequest ERP.