Preface to the MKWI Conference Track Semantic Web Technology in Business Information Systems
Martin Hepp1 and Jürgen Angele2
1
Semantics in Business Information Systems Group Universität Innsbruck Technikerstrasse 21a A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria mhepp@computer.org Ontoprise GmbH Amalienbadstraße 36 D-76227 Karlsruhe, Germany angele@ontoprise.de
2
Within the past five years, the Semantic Web research community has brought to maturity a comprehensive set of foundational technology components, and these both at the conceptual level and in the form of prototypes and software. This includes, among other assets, ontology engineering methodologies, standardized ontology languages, ontology engineering tools, and other infrastructure like APIs, repositories, and scalable reasoners, plus a plethora of work for making the Deep Web and computational functionality in the form of Web Services accessible at a semantic level. However, the amount of visible applications and convincing showcases is still limited, in particular in core areas of business information systems, like ERP systems and their maintenance, logistics, etc. At the same time, there exist many pressing challenges in business information systems that would obviously benefit from the higher level of abstraction and the increase in automation that semantic technologies can offer; but dissemination of the state of the art in SW technology into the respective communities is still to be improved. For the Track “Semantic Web Technology in Business Information Systems” at MKWI 2008 in Munich, we solicited papers describing the application of ontologies and related technology to typical IS challenges. We received a total of 15 submissions, which were reviewed by, on average, three members of the program committee of the track for relevance, accuracy, and significance of the findings. Eventually, competition was fierce, with only five of the submitted papers accepted for presentation and inclusion in the proceedings (30%...