Specification of the XKatalog [M.Sc. 2025]
In January of 2025, a Master’s Thesis utilizing SeMoX as part of a sophisticated standardization methodology was published.
The Thesis adopts SeMoX as a core standardization component for specifying a national E-Catalogue standard for Public E-Procurement in Germany: the XKatalog.
It is advised to acquire a basic understanding of SeMoX before reading
the Thesis. For interested readers, it is recommended to consult the thesis
in the following order:
Abstract => Conclusion => 5.2 SeMoX Specification => All synthesis sections in chronological order
Abstract
Public Procurement constitutes over one-third of government expenditures in Germany. Reducing these expenditures necessitates the use of electronic means to streamline and optimize the Public Procurement process, thereby transitioning it into Public Electronic Procurement. Currently, Public E-Procurement faces a variety of issues, including an unregulated transition between pre- and post-award phases and a lack of structured and reusable procurement data. The objective of this thesis is to specify a national electronic catalogue standard for Public E-Procurement, the “XKatalog”, that contributes towards overcoming these barriers to reduce transaction costs, and thus, public expenditures. Such an E-Catalogue standard, compatible with productively used pre- and post-award procurement standards, does not yet exist in Germany. For this purpose, Design Science Research (DSR) and the Framework for Interoperable Service Architecture Development (FISAD) are employed as methodologies. In the DSR’s rigor cycle, literature on Public E- Procurement’s problem environment and the status quo of standardized E-Catalogues is analysed to provide the scientific foundation for this thesis. In the DSR’s relevance cycle, workshops and interviews are conducted to capture the relevant application context of E- Catalogues in Public E-Procurement, supplemented by grey literature such as legal texts and ongoing research articles. Together, the rigorous and relevant foundations for further architectural considerations in FISAD are laid. The XKatalog’s baseline and target architecture is iteratively designed, demonstrated and evaluated in accordance with the Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM) within the DSR’s design cycle in design review workshops. Consequently, requirements are synthesized from both DSR and FISAD application, thereby providing a holistic understanding of required interoperability for the XKatalog’s technology neutral specification via Simple Semantic Data Modeling in XML (SeMoX). Further design review workshops in line with the DSRM and the DSR’s design cycle facilitate the iterative validation of the XKatalog’s SeMoX specification against its solution objectives and requirements. By choosing the Peppol Catalogue as the XKatalog’s base and specifying national extensions on hierarchical product trees, product configurability and price allowances and charges, all relevant requirements can be realized. Most notably, interoperability with both the Peppol pre-award Catalogue and XBestellung is achieved, thus enabling the migration of structured data from pre- to post- award and achieving a seamless process transition between phases. As a result, the XKatalog’s integration into the Public E-Procurement procedure can potentially reduce transaction costs and enhance competition. Finally, the XKatalog’s validation environment offers insights into illustrative test cases alongside technology neutral validation files that assert the XKatalog’s schema, cardinalities and rules on an XML message.