Proceedings of the 6 th Int. Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, Port, Portugal, April 2004. 1 A CONTENT ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE FOR CONSUMER-TO-BUSINESS E-COMMERCE Joshua H. Greenberg 1 , Douglas Dankel II 1 , and Borko Furht 2 1 University of Florida, Gainsville, Florida, 2 Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida Abstract. Consumer-to-Business (C2B) systems represent the future of eCommerce. Using natural language as a basis, and remaining keenly aware of its potential pitfalls, we describe a software specific communication model based on a new concept called content-biased language (CBL). It is shown that the requirements of a C2B system cannot be satisfied with anything less than the stretchability of a CBL. Once this fact has been established, the remainder of this paper discusses a representation for a CBL, as well as an architecture for utilizing that representation. This effort results in the description of a new software quality measure called stretchability, as well as the introduction of perspective domain graphs (PDGs), external open ontological type systems (EOOTS), and global and constituent systems. Finally, the discussion closes with the definition of a new distributed system design called the Content Oriented Architecture (COA). 1. Consumer-To-Business: The New Acronym for eCommerce Business-to-Business, or B2B, is a well-known term designating the Internet-based supply-chain oriented transactions executed between corporations. Business-to-Consumer (B2C) has also entered the business executive’s arsenal of Internet-based acronyms and generally signifies the set of activities surrounding the marketing and selling of goods by companies to individuals. Finally, the label Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) is usually applied to online auctions and other non-corporate business activities. While all of these buzzwords designate important and profitable computing paradigms, it is a less frequently discussed model that may prove most revolutionary. Consumer-to-Business (C2B) is defined in [1] and [5] as the comparison shopping activities performed on-line by a user before purchasing a product. While this definition may accurately represent current implementations, it barely scratches the surface of what is possible. By enabling direct-marketing and self-marketing, the C2B concepts proposed and clarified in this paper, will allow consumers to do far more than simply compare prices and characteristics. It will place consumers on an equal footing with corporations. If we move away from the notion of C2B as comparison-shopping, then at present, the most representative implementations are generally categorized as wallet software systems. Until very recently, the most formalized attempt at wallet software systems was the Electronic Commerce Modeling Language (ECML). ECML allows "consumers to enter personal details once into the wallet software, which could be called up as needed to make payments to retailers" [6]. Once the information has been entered, order forms for Internet transactions can be filled automatically with data, such as billing preferences, shipping information, identity, credit-card numbers, and digital certificates [3]. As recently as a year ago, Microsoft was discussing a new wallet based technology, code-named Hailstorm and later renamed as .NET MyServices. While the current status of the project is unclear, it is interesting to note that the wallet portion was to be called a safe-deposit box. While no complete version of Hailstorm is currently available, these naming choices, and the very existence of the product, demonstrate consensus concerning the evolution of C2B from comparison-shopping services to a complex consumer-based set of applications. This expanded view of the wallet more closely matches the domain of electronic commerce, which as described in [4], "involves everything one can do in the physical world: advertising, shopping, bartering, negotiating contracts and prices, bidding for contracts, ordering, billing, payment, settlement, accounting, loans, bonding, escrow, etc." 2. Example C2B Scenarios The following scenarios help clarify the intended role of C2B systems.