Keywords:
Astract: The Resource-Event-Agent (REA) ontology is a powerful and well accepted approach towards the design of enterprise information systems in the academic world. However, it still lacks application in industry products. Software like ERP applications might benefit from REA data structure by building their product's core on a robust, economic theory based, business ontology. Consequently, we have lately started a feasibility study with an Austrian ERP vendor, in which we investigate whether or not the ERP vendor can use the REA ontology as basis for their new ERP system. This paper is aimed at raising questions about uncertainties in REA we came across in our study so far.

Keywords: Enterprise Mashups, Mashups, Mashup Frameworks, Mashup Teaching Case
Astract: The usage of Enterprise Mashups enables users to create ad hoc applications without the need of technical knowledge. These applications can use and combine data sources of different systems. The integration of heterogeneous data in a new application is still a rather unused potential within a company.
Many companies work with a highly integrated ERP system, which contains the bigger part of the data to control the business processes. However not all necessary data is covered and accordingly not all processes can be controlled by the ERP system. Therefore the situation arises that information from various systems must be consolidated to make a decision. The usage of an ad hoc Mashup application, which is created according to necessary claims, leads to an important added value for the departments.
In line with this diploma thesis special requirements like data quality, the raised security of corporate sensitive information and the integration of legacy applications into Enterprise Mashups will be proved. Moreover a prototype for an Enterprise Mashup is implemented.
The prototype shows the combination of data from the ERP system Microsoft Dynamics AX in conjunction with other data sources. To put it into practice a solution to use the ERP system as a Mashup data source is developed. Available Mashup frameworks have been evaluated and the one with the best correlation according to the requirements has been chosen for the prototype.
The implemented Mashup shows the fast and straightforward combination of data from various applications. The prototype illustrates a teaching case for companies which want to supply their employees with the possibility to use existing data sources in the context of an Enterprise Mashup. User obtain the ability to create themselves instruments on demand for the daily business without programming skills.

Keywords: ERP Design, ERP Comparison, Software development
Astract: In today's business world, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are essential for larger enterprises to conduct their business.
ERP solutions fulfill several tasks in companies, including the management of resources, sales, warehouse, employees, and accounting.
Since even small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can gain profits using them, ERP solutions especially for those are developed. The main difference between them is the reduced complexity of ERP software for SMEs. Since about 98% of all Austrian companies have less than 50 employees, the market for appropriate ERP systems is large. Those statistics also apply to the entire European Union. Many SMEs do not work with an ERP system yet, but instead use Microsoft Excel and send business documents via email.
Another reason for a basic ERP system is that e-Invoicing is becoming more and more essential for SMEs. Larger enterprises are already using e-Invoicing for many years, but smaller enterprises lack the technical requirements. Most electronic data interchange (EDI) standards are too complex and the software is too expensive. Therefore a cheap and easy to use approach for SMEs to exchange business documents is desirable. The Vienna University of Technology project "`E-business Registry Permitting Enterprise Liaisons"' (ERPEL) fulfills those requirements. In order to motivate even small companies without any ERP system in use to partake, a basic ERP system is needed. A self-made solution is built especially including messaging, instead of adopting an existing open source ERP system.

Keywords: B2B e-commerce, Business Modeling, Business Process Modeling, REA, e3-value, UMM, B2B, DSL
Astract: Die heutige E-Commerce-Landschaft ist geprägt durch ständigen Wandel und Innovation. Vor allem im Umfeld des sich rasch verändernden Business-to-Business (B2B) E-Commerce wird Flexibilität im Umgang mit Änderungen immer wichtiger. Kontinuierlich wandelnde Verhältnisse zwingen Unternehmen immer häufiger dazu ihre geschäftlichen Ziele und Strategien den jeweiligen Umständen anzupassen. Dies betrifft nicht nur betriebswirtschaftlich relevante Unternehmensbereiche, sondern hat auch unmittelbare Auswirkung auf die darunterliegende technische Infrastruktur, welche die zugrundeliegenden Geschäftsprozesse zur Realisierung der Zielvorgaben umsetzt. Um den geschäftlichen Anforderungen gerecht zu werden, müssen daher auch die IT-gestützten Prozesse angepasst und berücksichtigt werden.
Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich vor allem mit der Fragestellung, wie geschäftliche und technische Anforderungen in Bezug auf interorganisationale Informationssysteme vernetzt und integriert werden können. Um dieses Ziel zu erreichen wurde im Zuge dieser Dissertation eine Methode entwickelt, die Geschäftsmodelle und Geschäftsprozessmodelle in einer Form verbindet, die eine semiautomatische Generierung von ausführbaren Artefakten (z.B., Web Services oder Workflowspezifikationen), die konsequenterweise auf den geschäftlichen Anforderungen basieren, ermöglicht. Um die jeweiligen Problemstellungen der unterschiedlichen Sichtweisen adäquat behandeln zu können, sieht die Methode vor etablierte Techniken aus den Forschungsdisziplinen Geschäftsmodellierung und Geschäftsprozessmanagement anzuwenden. Konkret sind dies die e3-value Geschäftsmodellontologie, die Resource-Event-Agent (REA) Ontologie und die UN/CEFACT's Modeling Methodology (UMM). Des Weiteren wurde, um die genannten Ansätze integrieren zu können, ein auf semantischer Ähnlichkeit basiertes Mappingverfahren entwickelt, mit dessen Hilfe es ermöglicht wird verwandte Konzepte der unterschiedlichen Sprachen miteinander zu verknüpfen. Die entwickelte Methode wurde anhand einer konkreten Toolimplementierung evaluiert. Dabei wurden sowohl die Geschäfts- als auch die Geschäftsprozessebene als domänenspezifische Sprache implementiert. Die ursprünglichen Techniken wurden dabei in Hinblick auf deren Notation weiterentwickelt. Durch die sich so ergebende einheitliche formale Darstellung war es überdies möglich einen semiautomatischen Transformationsmechanismus zu realisieren, der auf dem zuvor erwähnten Mappingverfahren basiert. Des Weiteren wurde die Methode als auch die entwickelte Systemimplementierung gemeinsam mit Industriepartnern aus dem Printmedienbereich auf ihre Anwendbarkeit und Verständlichkeit hin untersucht.

Keywords: EDI, penetration, diversity, empirical analysis, Electronic Data Interchange
Astract: Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) has been used for decades for automated business-to-business (B2B) trading of goods and services between companies. However, EDI is still one of the key challenges of today's businesses. There are several reasons for EDI adoption or EDI non-adoption. While EDI leads to many benefits for a firm, also various drawbacks come into existence. A large variety of delimiter-based and eXtensible Markup Language (XML)-based EDI standards makes it difficult for enterprises to decide which standard to use. This decision is influenced by several factors, such as the company's industry sector or the company's trading partners. In addition, the used Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system plays a relevant part of well integrated EDI.
The purpose of this thesis was to examine real-world phenomena of EDI that appear in organizations in Austria. The research question this thesis aims to solve focuses on the diversity and penetration of EDI, including reasons for and against EDI adoption, EDI's share on business transactions, and the adaption between the company's internal operational structure, the ERP system, and EDI.
The findings of this thesis are based on statistical analyses of surveyed data from an empirical study of 227 companies in Austria. Of these, 103 companies used EDI, which represents an EDI penetration of 45.4% across all participants. 75.2% of the companies that used an ERP system also adopted EDI.
The results indicate that the size and the ERP system of a company have an influence on the EDI penetration. Moreover, it was found that the use of either a delimiter-based EDI standard or an XML-based EDI standards was influenced by the geographical size of the company's supplied market, the ERP system, the number of EDI partners, the number of sent EDI messages, and competitive reasons.
Furthermore, the results of the study revealed that EDI non-adopters had rather strategic than technical or financial concerns about EDI introduction. Additionally, the results indicated that EDI was mainly adopted because of cost and time savings as well as to reinforce the competitive position. 76.6% of the EDI adopters introduced EDI to meet the needs of their business partners.
90% of the companies fully automated forwarding of incoming EDI messages to concerning business applications. However, every second company reported manual interaction caused by problems with EDI processing.