ISO/IEC 15944-21:2023

INTERNATIONAL ISO/IEC
STANDARD 15944-21
First edition
2023-05
Information technology — Business
operational view —
Part 21:
Guidance on the application of
the Open-edi business transaction
ontology in distributed business
transaction repositories
Reference number
© ISO/IEC 2023
© ISO/IEC 2023
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© ISO/IEC 2023 – All rights reserved

Contents Page
Foreword .iv
Introduction .v
1 Scope . 1
2 Normative References .1
3 Terms and definitions . 1
4 Symbols and abbreviations .9
5 Ontology of an Open-edi Distributed Business Transaction Repository.9
5.1 Transitions of the economic claim in a business transaction . 9
5.2 Repository of business transaction information . 15
5.3 Implementation rules of a business transaction information repository . 16
5.3.1 Rule 1 . 16
5.3.2 Rule 2 . 16
5.3.3 Rule 3 . 17
5.3.4 Rule 4 . 17
5.4 Conforming ISO/IEC 15944-1 properties of an OeDBTR . 17
6 Conformance .17
Annex A (normative) Consolidated controlled vocabulary definitions and associated terms,
as human interface equivalents (HIEs), English and French language equivalency
in the IT standardization context .18
Bibliography .21
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Foreword
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Commission) form the specialized system for worldwide standardization. National bodies that are
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The procedures used to develop this document and those intended for its further maintenance
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accordance with the editorial rules of the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2 (see www.iso.org/directives or
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This document was prepared jointly by Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology,
Subcommittee SC 32, Data management and interchange.
A list of all parts in the ISO/IEC 15944 series can be found on the ISO and IEC websites.
Any feedback or questions on this document should be directed to the user’s national standards
body. A complete listing of these bodies can be found at www.iso.org/members.html and
www.iec.ch/national-committees.
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Introduction
ISO/IEC 15944-4 defines the Open-edi Business Transaction Ontology (OeBTO) as a formal, rule-based
specification and definition of the concepts pertaining to business transactions and scenarios and the
relationships that hold among these concepts.
Figure 1 overviews the ontology of a business transaction. It is taken from ISO/IEC 15944-4:2015,
Figure 21, modified as follows to bring to light certain properties that were not illustrated at the time:
— the generalization of “Partner” to “Person” is according to ISO/IEC 15944-4:2015, Figure 18;
— the business policy connections between the three types (i.e. Economic Resource Type, Economic
Event Type and Economic Role) is according to ISO/IEC 15944-4:2015, Figure 13; and
— the connections of party (OeP) and counterparty (OeCP) are shown as distinct persons having
negotiated the Economic Contract.
Figure 1 — Open-edi Business Transaction Ontology
According to ISO/IEC 15944-4, each business entity, depicted as a box in the diagram, is a computable
representation of a real- world entity that participates, occurs, or is materialized during a business
transaction. These are either static representations for the duration of the business transaction or
dynamically changing representations implemented as individual state machines. Different business
events effecting the business transaction are inputs influencing different sets of one or more of the
state machines and changing their individual states. The particular states that each business entity can
exhibit are established prior to the business transaction starting in order that the state machines act
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as deterministic automatons for the duration. Initiating the business transaction instantiates the state
machine of each business entity based on its negotiated definition.
The concept of a business collaboration that is illustrated in Figure 2. It has been updated from
ISO/IEC 15944-4:2015, Figure 3 to bring to light the party (OeP) and counterparty (OeCP) as distinct
persons of a generic nature, not necessarily a buyer nor a seller.
Figure 2 — Concept of a Business Collaboration
The collaboration space captures the information regarding a value exchange between the party and
counterparty who have entered into an economic contract. The business transaction occurs within
this space. The duality of the business transaction is that it involves two economic events, that is, two
transfers of value in the value exchange. One transfer of value is from the OeP to the OeCP, and the other
transfer of value is from the OeCP to the OeP.
ISO/IEC 15944-4 describes the ontology as the properties of this active multi-step process of the
business transaction between party and counterparty from planning through to post-actualization. The
business transaction transits through a series of states, one with each step, with each state stimulus
being a business event. After any business event in the business transaction one can view the status of
the interrelations between the ontology components as an outcome of that event.
This document supplements ISO/IEC 15944-4 by describing the Open-edi Distributed Business
Transaction Repository (OeDBTR) properties of an indelible history or formal record of these changes
in interrelations. This history can subsequently be queried or inspected. Without such a history of the
state transitions of business entities, there is no record of the life cycle of the business transaction from
instantiation to termination.
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INTERNATIONAL STANDARD ISO/IEC 15944-21:2023(E)
Information technology — Business operational view —
Part 21:
Guidance on the application of the Open-edi business
transaction ontology in distributed business transaction
repositories
1 Scope
This document specifies the business operational view of an implementation of an Open-edi Distributed
Business Transaction Repository (OeDBTR), building on the principles and concepts defined in
ISO/IEC 15944-4 of a business transaction. The repository stores the history of the transitions in
states of the economic claim and/or other business entities that happen over the course of a business
transaction, and does so for a collection of business events. These business events, comprised of
transactions and their states, can be identified unambiguously so as to provide the ability to inspect
or query the information at some point after the record has been made. The distributed nature of the
repository offers users ubiquitous and robust access to the recorded history.
A history of business transactions of market exchanges can be useful in auditing or other memoing-
based activities, looking back at the immutable record of the interactions between parties.
This document does not specify the Functional Services View of a particular implementation of an
Open-edi Distributed Business Transaction Repository. For best performance, candidate technologies
would likely exhibit properties of long-term permanence, robust immutability, decentralized access,
distributed resilience, and fine-grained addressability.
2 Normative References
The following documents are referred to in the text in such a way that some or all of their content
constitutes requirements of this document. For dated references, only the edition cited applies. For
undated references, the latest edition of the referenced document (including any amendments) applies.
ISO/IEC 15944-4, Information technology — Business operational view — Part 4: Business transaction
scenarios — Accounting and economic ontology
3 Terms and definitions
For the purposes of this document, the following terms and definitions apply.
ISO and IEC maintain terminological databases for use in standardization at the following addresses:
— ISO Online browsing platform: available at https:// www .iso .org/ obp
— IEC Electropedia: available at http:// www .electropedia .org/
3.1
business
series of processes (3.34), each having a clearly understood purpose, involving more than one Person
(3.33), realized through the exchange of information and directed towards some mutually agreed upon
goal, extending over a period of time
[SOURCE: ISO/IEC 14662:2010, 3.2]
© ISO/IEC 2023 – All rights reserved

3.2
business event
occurrence in time that an Open-edi Party (3.28) and an Open-edi Counterparty (3.26) in a business
transaction (3.4) wish to monitor or control
Note 1 to entry: Business events are the workflow tasks that business partners need to accomplish to complete
a business transaction among themselves. As business events occur, they cause a business transaction to move
through its various phases of planning, identification, negotiation, actualization, and post-actualization.
Note 2 to entry: Occurrences in time can either: (a) be internal as mutually agreed to among the parties to a
business transaction and/or (b) reference some common publicly available and recognized date/time referencin
...