In an e-commerce environment, contracts are important for attaining business process interoperability and enforcing their
proper enactment. An e-contract is the computerized facilitation or automation of a contract in a cross-organizational business
process. We find that e-contract facilitation can be divided into multiple levels and perspectives, which has not been adequately
addressed before. In this paper, we present a framework for e-contract enactment with three layers, viz., business layer,
structural layer, and implementation layer. In the business layer, e-contracts are defined through analyzing the contract
clauses to business rules and business entities. In the structural layer, requirements for the E-contract enactment workflow
are elucidated through requirement analysis to cover both static and dynamic aspects. In the implementation layer, workflows
and cross-organizational interoperating interfaces are implemented using contemporary Enterprise Java Bean and Web services.
In this paper, we present the methodology and process for engineering the functional aspects of e-contracts from high-level
business-view down to implementation layer based on this framework, illustrated with an investment example. The framework
allows an e-contract to be seamlessly defined and enacted. The framework is modeled in UML.
Keywords e-contracts - cross-organizational business process - UML - workflow management - Web services