Ontologies-Based Business Integration

E-business integration is a vision we have developed over a long period of time. As we have worked in business practice for many years prior to and in parallel with our academic research, we have always thought of such - tegration not only as an intellectual challenge but also as a real business tool. Consequently, when we started our project on Ontologies-based R- onciliation for Business Integration (ORBI) in 2004, not only pure science but also business objectives were at the center of our research. We were very happy to be able to form a project consortium that consisted not only of renowned researchers but also of experienced business practitioners from a range of companies. Each played a specific role ¿ as user, provider or co-developer of the application components that are based on the me- ods we have developed. So may this book find its way not only to the desks of researchers and students, but also into the offices and minds of business practitioners worldwide who are dealing with the challenge of integrating their business processes, applications and information. This book is, in the most general sense, about understanding each other ¿ that is, what we do and think. Needless to say, within the project itself, and its environment, we had many opportunities to apply this underlying philosophy. In the end, the results prove it was worth the effort.