陳宗義

A virtual enterprise (VE) is a network of independent, geographically dispersed administrative business domains that collaborate by sharing business processes and resources across enterprises to provide a value-added service to customers. Successfully implementing a VE relies on information transparency and appropriate resource sharing among VE workers, and, hence, two important issues for information security and trust among coworkers are introduced. This dissertation covers access control models and a trust evaluation method. In considering the activities during a VE’s lifecycle, this study presents a Virtual Enterprise Access Control (VEAC) model that facilitates resource sharing and reuse. The VEAC model has a Project-based Access Control (PBAC) model that handles public resources held by VE, and an RBAC-based model that manages private resources owned by various VE members. These public and private resources, which are created, updated, shared and reused by authorized workers, can be databases, XML documents, web information and services, applications and knowledge within a VE, and encompass engineering data for product modeling, technology information for product implementation, domain skills and knowledge, and any external resources available to a VE. A trust evaluation method based on the VEAC model is also presented that improves resource security while safeguarding sensitive resources that support collaboration. The results of the study enhance the security of resource sharing and reuse during collaboration and cooperation within a VE, reduce the costs of resource management and eliminate the complexity of resource sharing across enterprises.

Owing to the global competition and the rapid advancement of information technology, electronic commerce becomes one of the most promising strategies to increase competitiveness. The success of eCommerce is highly dependent on the flexibility of business processes and the integrateability of business activities, as well as the reconfigurability of eCommerce systems to reflect the change of business environment. Therefore, the flexibility and the ability to integrate with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP）Systems are required for an eCommerce system.

The objective of this research is to develop a flexible architecture for implementation of ERP-based eCommerce systems. The business activities supported by an eCommerce system which is developed based on the proposed architecture can be fully integrated with the internal business processes and thus cope with enterprise operation strategy through making good use of resources provided by integrated enterprise resource planning systems.