Doing eBusiness with XML

Ray Patel & Ravi Tadwalkar

Doing eBusiness with XML : Agenda

• eBusiness Models– Selling direct to the customer (B2C)– Business to business (B2B) transactions– Information and Content Exchange (ICE)

• EDI “business conversations”• Why move from EDI syntax to XML ?• From EDI to XML/EDI• Future directions

What is eBusiness ?• E-Business

– Is about information exchange– Includes variety of supplemental messages

• Supply chain– Coordination of a portfolio of assets, logistics, information &

operations involved in fulfilling the final customer demand.

• Messaging via EDI– Many web-sites have ERP back-ends being automated to

process orders either via EDI or proprietary protocols & message formats.

eBusiness Models– Selling direct to the customer

• In B2C transactions, customers use credit cards while ordering directly- Disintermediation at work !

– Business to business transactions• In B2B transactions, trading partners have contracts with

supplier- virtual inventory for procurement !

• Rip and read processing is the order of the day!

• XML in eBusiness aims to get rid of rip and read !

– Information and Content Exchange (ICE)• focussing on extending the enterprise, streamlining intra-

enterprise processes, using infomediaries.

InfomediaryBrowser Suppliers

EDI “business conversations”• EDI paved the way for eBusiness.

– Americans use ANSI/X12– Rest of the world uses UN/EDIFACT

• EDI transaction or business conversation– Uses dynamic messages shared using schemas.– Schemas are detailed descriptions of format of data objects

mutually agreed upon by parties. – Message is wrapped in an envelope having header, segments

and elements, and trailer.– We use mapper software Mercator to translate messages from

and into internal formats.

Why move from EDI to XML ?

• When implementing an eBusiness solution with XML and EDI, it is called XML/EDI.

• XML tagging syntax is much more verbose, but simplifies integration of messages, allowing additional information to be used by the process in addition to data itself.

• Using XML, we can develop the XML/EDI message formats that need not be translated!

Moving from EDI to XML/EDI• An example of XML/EDI

– Original EDI X12 header :• ISA^00^ ^ZZ^1019000

ZZ^COLONIAL^980120^1712^U^00200^000000005^0^P^>

– The ASC X12 compliant XML/EDI header :• <ISA AuthorizationQual=‘00’ Authorization=‘’ SecurityQual=

‘00’ Security=‘’ SenderQual=‘ZZ’ Sender=‘1019000’ ReceiverQual=‘ZZ’ Receiver=‘ COLONIAL ’ XchgDate=‘ 980120 ’ XchgTime= ‘ 1712’ StdAgency=‘U’ StdVersion=‘ 00200’ AckReq=‘0’ Usage=‘P’ >000000005</ISA>

Why XML?• XML is for loose-coupling

– no recordset sends– no parameter passing– not everything is going to be web based!

• Applying XML in eBusiness– Message Headers

• Multi-tiered Routing Issues

– Message Body• Using existing Schemas

Why XML?• XML is for loose-coupling

– no recordset sends• Why return VB collections, database cursors, etc. ?

• Send self describing data as an XML page instead!

– no parameter passing• Why bother about pass by value or reference ?

• Send XML page- XML parser will help the other side of the world!

– And not everything is going to be web based!• E.g. doing behind-the-web, batch mode operations!

– EDI is tightly-coupled, XML loosely-coupled!

Why XML?• Applying XML in eBusiness

– Involves XML message travelling between a customer and a supplier. XML is used at every application tier, throughout the supply chain!

– Message Headers• Multi-tiered Routing Issues

– Routing, Security, Error flagging, Transaction identity, Batching, Tracking, Transport independence, etc.

– Message Body• Using existing Schemas

– XML data involves reuse of the domain vocabularies; since the self describing XML page is for humans too!

Future directions• Agents

– Agent is component that independently acts to accomplish goal of user or another component.

– Agents allow the XML/EDI systems to be self-adaptive and able to handle large expansion of exchanges without excess human intervention.

– We typically use agents in tracking transaction content, to send an alert to support staff about the potential failure conditions in EDI input.

Future directions• Templates

– Templates are useful in establishing a common negotiation protocol at the middle tier.

– Templates are dynamically created by agents, using message brokering techniques.

• Message Brokers– “Hub and spoke” architecture for EAI

• Brokering messages between one or more target entities, networks, middleware, apps or systems, regardless of how the message is represented!

• Use message translation, rules management and intelligent routing mechanisms.