ebXML: Assembling the Rubik's Cube
by Alan Kotok |

ebXML: Assembling the Rubik's Cube (cont'd)

Repositories: more than just containers

Another key feature in the ebXML architecture is the proposed set of distributed repositories, which will store all of the objects needed by trading partners to do business electronically. Nickull called the repository "the heart of the architecture", yet he also called it a black box--because its development lags somewhat behind some of the other ebXML features. In the week before the August meeting, the leader of the repository team announced he could not attend because of pressing business that required his presence elsewhere. David Webber of XML Global had to step in at the last minute to lead the repository development team.

Repositories will provide trading partners with the process models, core components, predefined messages, model trading partner agreements, and any other objects to enable parties to exchange data electronically. The specifications will show how industries or companies can populate and update the repositories, as well as detail the features with which business users can access the repositories. Nickull said ebXML anticipates creation of a series of multiple distributed repositories; just one or even a few repositories would not likely scale sufficiently to handle anticipated message traffic.

EbXML repositories will store the connections between an industry's own language and the core components. Nickull discussed a proposal for globally unique identifiers assigned to core components, to which industries could relate their specific terms, but the group had not yet decided which identifier to use. Industry repositories would also contain the industry specific components (those not covered by ebXML core components) needed to do business electronically.

In the example of the single party in multiple contexts presented earlier, the same core component identifier would apply to the airline passenger, buyer of the gift, shipper of the package and guest at the hotel. Each industry's or company's repository would store the common identifier and relate it to its specific industry terminology--passenger, buyer, shipper, and guest.

A registry serves as a repository's index and gateway to the outside world. An ebXML registry would contain an application program interface or API that governs how parties interact with the repository. In the ebXML architecture, businesses could query many repositories as long as they had ebXML-compliant registries.

More functionality added

In the August meeting, ebXML added a new feature called the trading partner agreement. At the mid-week general session, Martin Sachs of IBM gave a presentation of the Trading Partner Agreement Markup Language (tpaML) developed by IBM earlier in the year. Trading partner agreements define the rules of engagement between entities that wish to do business electronically. The tpaML hopes to streamline the process of establishing electronic trading relationships, a process with earlier technologies that can take weeks or months.

EbXML plans to integrate the trading partner agreement into the architecture, and created a separate work group, headed by Sachs, to develop that part of it. Sachs and his group will first write a UML model to describe the agreement process and write a specification based on that process.

Test of ebXML messaging demonstrates multiple trading-partner interactions

In the mid-week general session, a proof-of-concept team, headed by Nick Kassem of Sun Microsystems, demonstrated the use of ebXML transport-routing-packaging specifications with a test of different message-exchange scenarios. The test involved systems from several companies: Fujitsu, Netfish Technologies, Viquity, Vitria, Sun Microsystems, and WebMethods. The tests also covered three message configurations: one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one.

In each case, the scenario routed the message through a hub, provided by Viquity. The hub simulated a third party that could be employed to provide e-business services to smaller enterprises not able to support the entire ebXML architecture. Kassem said other tests by his team demonstrated point-to-point messaging, without the hub, but the session for the demonstration did not allow enough time to show it live.

The team that designed the test based the messages on a RosettaNet Partner Interface Process for purchase order management. That process has a series of messages that include:

1. Purchase order request
2. Acknowledgment
3. Order acceptance
4. Receipt

The messages used ebXML headers, routing, and packaging, with the payload of the messages made up of content from the RosettaNet specification. In each case the tests followed the prescribed path, and each company's server showed either sending, routing, or receipt of the test messages as intended.

Klaus-Dieter Naujok noted the value of these tests for ebXML. In a briefing after the session, Naujok said that proof of concept tests "make ebXML into its own customer, and turn theory into practice." He added that ebXML ideas are often implementable even before the final approvals of its specifications.

At the previous ebXML meeting in May, a proof of concept test used one point-to-point exchange scenario. However that earlier test also simulated the download of a process model and message choreography from a repository. The August tests focused only on the transport-routing-packaging specifications.

Global Commerce Initiative chooses ebXML

The ebXML effort got a big boost a week before the meeting when the Glocal Commerce Initiative (GCI) announced it would base its technical infrastructure on ebXML. GCI, composed of 40 manufacturers and retailers, includes such household names as Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Kraft Foods, Marks and Spencer, and Home Depot, with potential audience of 850,000 businesses worldwide, large and small.

GCI on 31 July unveiled its Global Commerce Internet Protocol designed to overcome the rapid development of incompatible single-industry vocabularies and vertical exchanges. In order to achieve interoperability, the group's announcement noted that its "technical infrastructure standards have been developed by ebXML and form the basis of the GCI technical recommendation." According to a GCI announcement, four major exchanges in the consumer goods industry--Transora, the WorldWide Retail Exchange, GlobalNetXchange, and CPGmarket.com--voiced support for the GCI project. (See http://www.uc-council.org/news/ne_industry_issues_global_comm.html.)

At the end of the week, the Open Travel Alliance, a current ebXML participant, offered its just-completed customer profile specifications to ebXML. It also offered to its align its specifications with related vocabularies, using ebXML as the vehicle. (See http://www.opentravel.org/opentravel/press_releases/pr081000.htm).

Are we there yet?

Naujok noted at several points during the meeting that ebXML was now over the half-way point in its self-imposed 18 month timetable, and the group had to begin focusing more on delivery of specifications as well as development. To help with this task, ebXML formed a new team for project management and turned the technical coordination group into a quality assurance team. He asked all teams to plan on completing specifications within six months (by February 2001), saving the last meeting in Vienna in May 2001 for the finishing touches and plans for the future.

While the organizational adjustments will help meet the challenge, there is no denying the extent of the job ahead. One participant called the overall architecture "the box top of the jigsaw puzzle." In fact, it more closely resembles a Rubik's Cube, with pieces of the puzzle fitting in multiple layers, all of which must work seamlessly.

Much of the ebXML effort has so far gone into writing the individual specifications. If the development teams only had to write specifications, meeting the final deadline would not be an issue. As participants learned in San Jose, however, getting the pieces to fit together require as many people skills as technical ones. The eventual success of ebXML will probably depend more on these people skills than the UML models and angle brackets in the technology.

Disclosure: Alan Kotok is Director of Education at Data Interchange Standards Association and a participant in the ebXML marketing-awareness-education team. In previous work he served as standards manager for the Open Travel Alliance.

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