The Internet of Products: An Approach to Establishing Total Transparency in Electronic Markets

275 Pages·2013·3.29 MB·English

by  Robert Neumann (auth.)

The Internet of Products
Robert Neumann

The Internet of Products
An Approach to Establishing Total
Transparency in Electronic Markets
Robert Neumann
Magdeburg, Germany

Dissertation Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, 2012

ISBN 978-3-658-00904-5 ISBN 978-3-658-00905-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-00905-2
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Abstract
In April 2011, the European Commission in their Single Market Act announced
that they would try to raise the percentage of inner-European, e-commerce-based
trade from 3.4% to 6.8% until the year 2015. The rationale behind this plan is to
foster a European electronic commerce infrastructure that enables enterprises to
claim new markets and increase sales. At the same time, the EC hopes that their
initiative would be the kick-off for an Information Systems-based European
growth facilitator.
This thesis proposes the Internet of Products as a concept that aims to support the
EC initiative from an information systems perspective. It approaches the difficult
problem of providing Internet users with a completely transparent view of the
inner-European market from a product information accessibility point of view.
Furthermore, it analyzes economic, ecological, and societal gains of openly ac-
cessible product information in the form of theoretical models, and thereby un-
derlines the EC’s growth hypothesis. Though many aspects of very different
research disciplines have to be investigated to gain a holistic view of the IoP, this
thesis reduces the range of involved research topics to product information dis-
coverability related questions.
When users employ online search engines for product search, the quality of the
search results –to a vast extent– is determined by the product search engine it-
self. Among the list of insufficiencies of product search engines are potentially
biased rankings (due to economic interests), a distorted view (due to weaknesses
in search capabilities), as well as the inability to match queries and product de-
scriptions among different languages and cultures.
This thesis introduces the concept of a Semantic Product Server (SPS) that aims
to provide users with a highly effective tool for Internet-based product infor-
mation discovery. The SPS is based upon a Semantic Product Description Lan-
guage (S-PDL) that can be used to author attribute-based product descriptions.
The product descriptions are hosted and interpreted by the SPS. The SPS, on the
other hand, provides client applications with an interface to browse and search
for particular goods, and –due to its integration into a wide network of SPS in-
stances– allows suppliers for sharing their product descriptions among the world.
VI Abstract
One of the major challenges of the SPS lies in ensuring real-time search perfor-
mance. This thesis analyzes and provides insights from a reference application of
the SPS, the so called ArbiterOne system. Based on measurement data that was
collected from the ArbiterOne system, in its core this thesis engineers and shares
an SPS reference architecture and a formal definition of the S-PDL.
Table of Contents

Abstract .............................................................................................................. V
Acronyms ........................................................................................................ XIII
List of Figures .................................................................................................. XV
List of Tables .................................................................................................. XIX
Listings ............................................................................................................ XXI
1 Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
1.1 Motivation ............................................................................................. 1
1.2 Research Objectives .............................................................................. 2
1.3 Chapter Overview ................................................................................. 5
1.4 A Word on Category Theory ................................................................. 7
Part I: Electronic Commerce and the Internet of Products .... 9
2 The Economics of E-Economies ............................................................... 11
2.1 Fundamentals ...................................................................................... 11
2.1.1 Gallery of Economics .............................................................. 11
2.1.2 From Economy to E-Economy ................................................ 22
2.1.3 From Commerce to E-Commerce ............................................ 25
2.1.4 Electronic Commerce Busines Models .................................... 27
2.1.5 Electronic Commerce Pricing Models ..................................... 30
2.1.6 Markets vs. Electronic Markets ............................................... 31
2.1.7 Macroeconomic Implications of Electronic Markets ............... 34
2.1.8 Implications on Welfare ........................................................... 37
2.2 E-Commerce Process Modeling .......................................................... 39
2.2.1 BPMN-based E-Commerce Process Model ............................. 39
2.2.2 (cid:83) Calculus-based E-Commerce Process Model ....................... 41
2.2.3 System Theoretical Market Model ........................................... 43
2.3 Chapter Summary ............................................................................... 44
VIII Table of Contents
3 The Internet of Products and The Triple Bottom Line ......................... 47
3.1 Market-based Categories .................................................................... 47
3.1.1 Basics of Category Theory ...................................................... 48
3.1.2 Category of Supply .................................................................. 51
3.1.3 Category of Demand ................................................................ 53
3.1.4 Category of Markets ................................................................ 54
3.1.5 Functors between Demand, Supply, and Markets .................... 56
3.1.6 Functor Category of Markets ................................................... 57
3.2 The Internet of Products ...................................................................... 59
3.2.1 Semantic Product Retrieval Benchmark .................................. 61
3.2.2 Toward Total Commerce ......................................................... 67
3.2.3 Reverse Commerce in the IoP ................................................. 71
3.3 The Triple Bottom Line ...................................................................... 72
3.3.1 The Category 3BL ................................................................... 72
3.3.2 The IoP Impact on the 3BL ..................................................... 74
3.3.3 3BL Impact Analysis Criticism ............................................... 78
3.4 Chapter Summary ............................................................................... 79
Part II: Technologies and Paradigms of the Internet of
Products ...................................................................... 83
4 Foundations of Semantic Product Query Systems ................................. 85
4.1 Semantic and Web 2.0 Principles ....................................................... 85
4.1.1 The Internet of Things ............................................................. 85
4.1.2 Ontologies ................................................................................ 90
4.1.3 Taxonomies ............................................................................. 94
4.1.4 Faceted Classification .............................................................. 96
4.1.5 Folksonomies ........................................................................... 98
4.1.6 Section Summary ................................................................... 102
4.2 Semantic Product Models and Classification .................................... 103
4.2.1 Origins of Product Modeling ................................................. 103
4.2.2 Semantic Product Models ...................................................... 104
4.2.3 Product Model Persistence .................................................... 109
4.2.4 Product Configurators ............................................................ 112
4.2.5 Product Classification ............................................................ 113
4.2.6 Section Summary ................................................................... 117
Table of Contents IX
4.3 Distributed SPQS Technologies and Paradigms ............................... 117
4.3.1 Component-based Software Engineering ............................... 117
4.3.2 Service-oriented Software Engineering ................................. 120
4.3.3 Agent-oriented Software Engineering ................................... 124
4.3.4 Cloud-based Software Engineering ....................................... 128
4.3.5 Section Summary ................................................................... 135
4.4 Quality Assurance in SPQS .............................................................. 137
4.4.1 Software Measurement Definition ......................................... 137
4.4.2 Measurement Objects in Business Software .......................... 137
4.4.3 Measurement Subjects of Business Software Evaluation ...... 140
4.4.4 Measurement Results of Software Quality Assurance ........... 142
4.4.5 Measurement Resources of Software Measurement .............. 143
4.4.6 Measurement Repercussions of E-Business Software
Improvement .......................................................................... 144
4.4.7 Detailed Measurement Process BMP for Business
Software Quality Assurance .................................................. 145
4.4.8 Section Summary ................................................................... 146
4.5 Chapter Summary ............................................................................. 146
Part III: S-PDL and SPS as Technological Backbone
of the Internet of Products ..................................... 149
5 Semantic Product Description Language .............................................. 151
5.1 Hierarchy-based Product Descriptions .............................................. 151
5.2 Semantic Product Description ........................................................... 153
5.2.1 Explicit vs. Implicit Semantics .............................................. 156
5.2.2 Category-based Fundamentals of Semantic Product
Descriptions ........................................................................... 157
5.2.3 Product attributes ................................................................... 159
5.2.4 Internationalization of Product Descriptions ......................... 160
5.2.5 Matching Product Descriptions with Queries ........................ 160
5.2.6 Query Refinement through Semantic Operators .................... 162
5.2.7 Localization of Product Descriptions ..................................... 166
5.2.8 Attribute Handlers ................................................................. 169
5.3 BNF of the S-PDL ............................................................................ 171
5.4 S-PDL Schema .................................................................................. 173
X Table of Contents
5.5 Chapter Summary ............................................................................. 175
6 Semantic Product Servers ...................................................................... 177
6.1 SPS Implementation.......................................................................... 177
6.2 SPS Client Interfaces ........................................................................ 178
6.3 SPS Catalog ...................................................................................... 178
6.4 SPS Execution Environment and Reference Architecture ................ 179
6.5 Dynamic Binding .............................................................................. 181
6.5.1 Mapping Functors to Software .............................................. 186
6.5.2 Memoized Functors ............................................................... 187
6.5.3 Memoization and Memory Utilization................................... 190
6.6 Query Matching ................................................................................ 193
6.7 SPS Deployment ............................................................................... 195
6.8 Chapter Summary ............................................................................. 197
7 Validation and Applications .................................................................. 201
7.1 SPS Prototypes and Applications ...................................................... 201
7.1.1 ArbiterOne ............................................................................. 201
7.1.2 eVoces ................................................................................... 204
7.1.3 EscapeMisery ......................................................................... 205
7.1.4 SpotCrowd ............................................................................. 205
7.2 System Performance and Caching .................................................... 207
7.2.1 Optimal Query Caching ......................................................... 208
7.2.2 Hybrid Cloud Storage Framework ......................................... 214
7.3 Chapter Summary ............................................................................. 222
8 Conclusion ............................................................................................... 225
8.1 Summary ........................................................................................... 225
8.2 Future Work ...................................................................................... 226
Table of Contents XI
9 Appendix .................................................................................................. 231
9.1 Appendix A: Transport Efficiency Analysis ..................................... 231
9.1.1 Triangle Inequality-based Model ........................................... 231
9.1.2 Ellipse-based Model .............................................................. 233
9.1.3 Segments-based Model .......................................................... 235
9.2 Appendix B: S-PDL Template Generation ....................................... 238
9.3 Appendix C: The KULI Model of E-Commerce Maturity ................ 242
10 Bibliography ............................................................................................ 245