Track: Semantic Web
Paper Title:
Explorations in the Use of Semantic Web Technologies for Product Information Management
Authors:
Abstract:
Master data refers to core business entities a company uses repeatedly
across many business processes and systems (such as lists or
hierarchies of customers, suppliers, accounts, products, or organizational
units). Product information is the most important kind of master data
and product information management (PIM) is becoming critical for
modern enterprises because it provides a rich business context for various
applications. Existing PIM systems are less flexible and scalable for
on-demand business, as well as too weak to completely capture and use
the semantics of master data. This paper explores how to use semantic
web technologies to enhance a collaborative PIM system by simplifying
modeling and representation while preserving enough dynamic
flexibility. Furthermore, we build a semantic PIM system using one of
the state-of-art ontology repositories and summarize the challenges we
encountered based on our experimental results, especially on performance
and scalability. We believe that our study and experiences are valuable
for both semantic web community and master data management community.
