期刊名称：Informing Science: The International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline
印刷版ISSN：1547-9684
电子版ISSN：1521-4672
出版年度：2006
卷号：9
页码：31-47
出版社：Informing Science Institute
摘要：Electronic Product Catalogs (EPCs) are becoming more and more important as businesses interact
electronically with one another and with customers. EPCs are the databases in which businesses
store information about their products. EPCs allow customers to locate items they wish to purchase
and business partners to access a business¡¯s offerings. Typically each business¡¯s EPC is
organized to meet the requirements of one of many competing standards. Problems arise when
various business partners use different standards to organize their EPC. Translating a product
catalog from one standard to another manually is no easy task, even for a single item, and the
typical EPC contains thousands of items. This situation is known as the reclassification problem.
The paper describes the problem in greater details and also proposes a solution, which we dub
¡°the Apricot approach¡±.
The article starts with a brief overview about EPCs and classification systems. It then provides a
description of the reclassification problem and describes existing solutions. Next, the Apricotapproach
and its implementation are described. This article provides evidence that the Apricot
Approach is useful and fruitful.
