A three-layer architecture for e-contract enforcement in an e-service environment

In an e-service environment, contracts are important for attaining business process interoperability and enforcing their proper enactment. An e-contract is the computerized facilitation or automation of a contract in a cross-organizational business process. We find that e-contract enforcement can be divided into multiple layers and perspectives, which has not been adequately addressed in the literature. This problem is challenging as it involves monitoring the enactment of business processes in counter parties outside an organization's boundary. This paper presents an architecture for e-contract enforcement with three layers, viz., document layer, business layer, and implementation layer. In the document layer, contracts are composed of different types of clauses. In the business layer, e-contract enforcement activities are defined through the realization of contract clauses as business rules in event-condition-action (ECA) form. In the implementation layer, cross-organizational e-contract enforcement interfaces are implemented with contemporary Enterprise Java Bean and Web services. We present a methodology for the engineering of e-contracts enforcement from a high-level document-view down to the implementation layer based on this architecture, using a supply-chain example. As a result, e-contracts can be seamlessly defined and enforced. Conceptual models of various layers are given in the Unified Modeling Language (UML).