Transforming ad hoc product data into canonical product representation

Interoperation between business partners is extremely important. However, most product data produced in many firms are considered as ad hoc and are not qualified for interoperation. To solve this problem, this paper has proposed a concept-centric definition transformation approach, which transforms irregular local product definitions from different data sources to a set of canonical local product representations. These canonical representations are thus able to translate these common product representations to what the public can understand, thus, achieving business interoperation between different semantic communities.