XML-Based E-Contracting

Under the research projects eLEGAL and OCTANE (funded by the IST programme of the European Commission), European companies have joined forces to develop a variety of tools and templates that are required to support forming and closing electronic contracts over the Internet without any media breaks. This article informs on some of the projects results.To explore practical business needs, scenarios are taken from different industries: on one side, construction companies and subcontractors enter a joint-venture to accomplish a construction project. In this setting, the e-contracting software is required to let partners compose contracts in an ad-hoc manner out of a clause database. A second scenario shows how bilateral agreements on data exchange relationships, data formats, or rules for information exchange can be made by using e-contracting tools.