Existing e-marketplaces are fragmented in the sense that each is an information island. The interoperation of product information between them is difficult especially in semantic level. This hinders global e-marketplace formation and distribution cost lowering. The traditional approaches of product standardization and ontology mediation could solve the problem only if all e-marketplaces could adopt the same product standards, or mediation systems could mediate all heterogeneous e-marketplaces without semantic conflicts. However, these are often the missions impossible. A reflection of the...