© 2002 IBM Corporation IBM Software Group IBM | 2004 © 2004 IBM Corporation BI-ICS Business Integration - Information Conformance Statements And the evolution

© 2002 IBM Corporation

IBM Software Group

IBM | 2004 © 2004 IBM Corporation

BI-ICSBusiness Integration - Information Conformance Statements

And the evolution toward raising the “vertical.org” standards bar

Scott Hinkelman, Senior Software EngineerSoftware Group / Emerging [email protected]

© 2004 IBM Corporation2 IBM | 2004

What is BI-ICS

Business Integration –Information Conformance Statements (“ICS”)

An initial component of the evolution of infrastructure standards toward the business layers


What is the Evolution

Continued focus on interaction specifications and standards Increases the focus on business-level issues

Web services (WS-*) is successful enterprise infrastructure: secure, reliable, transactional

But not business oriented “crawling up the stack” off of the infrastructure Help close the gap between infrastructure and vertical content Motivated from the perspective of vertical XML industry consortiums


Current Web Services Infrastructure Stack

Service Composition

Transports

Messaging

Description/Discovery

Quality ofExperience(QoX)

HTTP/HTTPS SMTP RMI / IIOP

WSDL

SOAP WS-Addressing WS-Renewable References

WS-Metadata ExchangeWS-Policy

WS-Service Group

WS-Resource Properties

JMS

WS-Security

WS-Reliable Messaging WS-Transaction

WS-Resource Lifetime

WS-Base Faults

WS-Notification BPEL4WS

UDDI

WSRP


Evolution Principals1. Focused, composable specifications

Consistent with the WS-* approach

Facilitate re-use and incremental adoption

Avoid lengthy monolithic unapproachable specifications

2. Vertical industry agnosticFocus on cross-industry pain points

3. No industry contentNot defining a purchase order, address, travel information, etc

4. Consistent with WS-*Specifications to show a “WS-* binding”

Not dependent on WS-* technology

Consistent with desire of typical verticals to remain infrastructure agnostic


Evolution Target Space

Service Composition

Transports

Messaging

Description/Discovery

Quality ofExperience(QoX)

HTTP/HTTPS SMTP RMI / IIOP

WSDL

SOAP WS-Addressing WS-Renewable References

WS-Metadata ExchangeWS-Policy

WS-Service Group

WS-Resource Properties

JMS

WS-Security

WS-Reliable Messaging WS-Transaction

WS-Resource Lifetime

WS-Base Faults

WS-Notification BPEL4WS

[TARGET] BI-ICS

Common Industry Content

Industry-specific ContentIndustry-specific Content

Infr

astr

uctu

reB

usin

ess

UDDI

WSRP


Key Approach Points

Important to partner with business-level companies, ISVs, and industry vertical organizations to promote specification/standards

XML centric

Consistent with “vertical .org’s”

Cognizant of the emerging OMG MDA work


Key Evolution Spaces

Business Interoperability

Business Usage Discipline

Business Payload Composition

Business Contracts

BI-ICS


About BI-ICS The initial step of the evolution A specification - XML vocabulary for a statement about information

conformance“Information is stated to be conformant with this type system”

XML Schema type system, MIME type, some other type system“Information is stated to be conformant with a process”

A Schematron schema process, some other process Extensible Conformance Model

Sequence: example-> this schema, then this schema. Or this schema then this transform, etc.

Extensible vocabularyAny emerging constraint mechanism

Businesses exchange all kinds of information, not just XMLBI-ICS facilitates declaring conformance for all kinds of information

Simple, powerful Java implementation proof of concept


BI-ICS – Use Any Mechanism to Declare your Constraints

XSD type system

BI-ICS provides declaring information constraints using pervasive mechanisms or whatever emerges

MIME type systemSchematronassertions

(Whatever mechanism)

BI-ICS


BI-ICS Motivation

>The wide-spread issues with business level interoperability within industry-level XML standards consortiums

Addresses common issues facing many industry-level XML consortiums (optional fields, etc)

The opportunity to increase interoperability at the business level for consortium members


BI-ICS Example 1

<InformationConformanceStatement> <Description>This Conformance statement……</Description> <ConformanceModel> <ConformanceAny> <Conformance name="jpg"> <Description>jpg images are ok for processing.</Description> <TypeSystem> <MIMETypeSystem>image/jpg</MIMETypeSystem> </TypeSystem> </Conformance> <Conformance name="gif"> <Description>gif images are ok fro processing.</Description> <TypeSystem> <MIMETypeSystem>image/gif</MIMETypeSystem> </TypeSystem> </Conformance> </ConformanceAny> </ConformanceModel></InformationConformanceStatement>

“The information is considered conformant if of type jpg or gif”


BI-ICS Example 2

<InformationConformanceStatement ….> <Description>This Conformance statement ….> <ConformanceModel> <ConformanceSequence> <Conformance name="industry standard schema"> <Description> This schema is an industry standard </Description> <TypeSystem> <W3CXMLSchemaTypeSystem eiiNamespaceName="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <InstanceLocation>./member.xsd</InstanceLocation> </W3CXMLSchemaTypeSystem> </TypeSystem> </Conformance> <Conformance name="further constrained schema"> <Description> This schema is a modified schema…. <Description> <TypeSystem> <W3CXMLSchemaTypeSystem eiiNamespaceName="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <InstanceLocation>./member_EducationRequired.xsd</InstanceLocation> </W3CXMLSchemaTypeSystem> </TypeSystem> </Conformance> </ConformanceSequence> </ConformanceModel></InformationConformanceStatement>

“The information is considered conformant if of the industry standard schema type and then also my further constrained schema type”


BI-ICS Example 3

<InformationConformanceStatement ….> <Description>This Conformance statement ….</Description> <ConformanceModel> <ConformanceSequence> <Conformance name="industry standard schema"> <Description> This schema is an industry standard with minimum constraints defined. </Description> <TypeSystem> <W3CXMLSchemaTypeSystem eiiNamespaceName="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <InstanceLocation>./member.xsd</InstanceLocation> </W3CXMLSchemaTypeSystem> </TypeSystem> </Conformance> <Conformance name="Schematron assertions"> <Description> This Schematron schema defines assertions for further constraints </Description> <Process> <SchematronSchema version="1.5"> <InstanceLocation>./educationrequiredassertion.xml</InstanceLocation> </SchematronSchema> </Process> </Conformance> </ConformanceSequence> </ConformanceModel></InformationConformanceStatement>

“The information is considered conformant if of the industry standard schema type and then also my Schematron assertions”


What is the Industry Value Elimination of conformance checking in application logic

Facilitates comprehensive runtime checking of information in application servers prior to application logic handoff

Facilitates an On Demand businessA business can declare/advertise comprehensive information

constraints for conducting B2B business

- based on profiled industry-level content standards


IBM’s BI-ICS4J on AlphaWorks BI-ICS4J implementation contains

A ‘Conformance Engine’ that interprets the conformance statement and calls appropriate ‘Conformance Enforcer’ objects

A ‘Manipulator’ for building/editing an ICS and checking conformance Examples

Based on Physician Profile standard from MedBiquitous.org

Almost all content in XML Schema xsd is optional

Example: at least 1 EducationInfo element is required

This is optional in the MedBiquitous standard Schema

Examples have 2 BI-ICS Conformance Statements to support this requirement

By using 2 XML SchemasMedBiquitous standard schema, and a further restricted version

of itBy using 1 XML Schema and 1 XSL Transform (via Schematron)

MedBiquitous standard schema, and a Schematron assertion rule


BI-ICS4J…. It is a proof of concept for the BI-ICS specification Builds on

Xerces

Xalan

JAXB

Schematron XSLT reference implementation Function, not performance Shows how the BI-ICS specification is useful in industry


Conformance Engine//establish a Conformance EngineConformanceEngine ce= new ConformanceEngine();

//check informance conformance.ConformanceResult cr= ce.enforceStatement(ICS, businessinfo);//Note: typical use is through the engine’s stream interface

//Check if information is conformantif(cr.getResult()==ConformanceResult.RESULT_YES){ //info is conformant}if(cr.getResult()==ConformanceResult.RESULT_NO){ //info is not conformant}if(cr.getResult()==ConformanceResult.RESULT_UNKNOWN){ //info conformance not known }


Visual Manipulator


Visual Manipulator….


Visual Manipulator….


BI-ICS Plans

Published spec/article/proof-of-concept on IBM DeveloperWorks / AlphaWorks January 04

Currently soliciting feedback from industry-level .org’s and member companiesIs this useful?

Feedback

A spec update likelyPotentially with interested parties

Interested in evolving the spec?

Would you actively support a standardization process to finalize BI-ICS?


Introduction Article

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-biics/

BI-ICS Spec

ftp://www6.software.ibm.com/software/developer/library/x-biics/BI-ICSSpec_v1.html

IBM AlphaWorks implementation

http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/biics4j

Links

Documents

© 2002 IBM Corporation IBM Software Group IBM | 2004 © 2004 IBM Corporation BI-ICS Business Integration - Information Conformance Statements And the evolution