---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: MERIT 2001 Call for Participation - ECOOP 2001 Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 16:43:28 +0100 From: Sergio de Cesare Sergio.deCesare@BRUNEL.AC.UK To: ISWORLD@LISTSERV.HEANET.IE

*** CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ***

International Workshop on Mechanisms for Enterprise Integration: From Objects to Ontologies (MERIT 2001) at the 15th European Conference on Object Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2001)

The Workshop will be held in Budapest on the 19 June 2001.

Web sites: http://www.site-project.org.uk/events/ecoop2001_workshop/ http://ecoop2001.inf.elte.hu/

THEME

The expansion of the Internet and the growth of e-commerce systems have accentuated pre-existing problems related with systems interoperability and the definition of common semantics throughout business organisations. Communication and exchange of data and information between business systems is nowadays dependent on the definition, modelling, design and implementation of underlying concepts shared across organisations. The issues involved are not just related to infrastructure and technology. Indeed fundamental problems exist around the understanding of what 'concepts' are shared, how they relate and what mechanisms should be adopted to allow systems to communicate and interoperate at all levels.

Genericity mechanisms, such as patterns, frameworks and components, have the potential for defining, modelling, designing and implementing shared concepts. Such mechanisms have inherited many object-oriented principles and built upon them to enhance the generalised nature of business problems and solutions both vertically (within the same domain) and horizontally (across different domains). Increasingly, these are supported by emerging 'ontological' definitions and related languages (e.g. XML) designed to exemplify genericity. The potential contribution of XML to the definition of business ontologies and semantics is also relevant. Researchers and practitioners world-wide are exploring the possibility of defining interoperable industry specifications based on XML and the definition of an Ontology Markup Language.

The adoption and implementation of genericity mechanisms and ontological 'tools' is difficult to implement in 'greenfield' situations. These difficulties are exacerbated in 'brownfield' situations in which clear architectural separations do not exist and multiple technologies do exist.

In light of this the aim of the workshop is to discuss:

- How shared business ontologies can be defined and represented - How the underlying semantics can be represented and implemented through object and component-based technologies - The role of mechanisms of generic abstraction in the definition of common semantics - The role of XML in the definition of business ontologies - The workshop will follow these phases:

The workshop will be organised as follows: - Presentation of reviewed papers followed by discussion and questions - Participants will be divided into groups of interest to discuss specific subtopics emerging from the previous phase - General discussion of points drawn by the groups in phase two - Conclusion

All academics and industrial practitioners interested in approaches to enterprise integration are invited to participate.

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