ebXML Framework Overview

ebXML Framework OverviewebXML Framework Overview

葉慶隆大同大學資訊工程系

Email: [email protected]: http://www.cse.ttu.edu.tw/chingyeh

From: Chapter 6, ebXML: Concepts and Application, by Brian Gibb and Suresh Damodaran, Wiley, 2003

Beyond Messaging 2

Introduction

• We present a sample purchase order scenario to demonstrate the use of ebXML BPSS, CPPA, and Registry specifications.

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The Purchase Use Case

• International purchase use case, adapted from a CEFACT model of international supply chain– Identify a partner– Negotiate a contract– Order goods– Ship the goods– Make payment

• The goal of ebXML framework is to create e-business solutions that automate the above steps.

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Observations on the use case

• The following observations help to identify – what you can automate and– How to do so.

• Observation 1: Common business processes exist1. Identify a partner (Step 1 of use case)

2. Negotiate and create a contract (Step 2 of use case)

3. Place order based on contract (Step 3 of use case)

4. Ship merchandise (Step 4 of use case)

5. Pay for merchandise (Step 5 of use case)

6. Archive trade records for auditing by authorities and to settle nonrepudiation of claims by collaboration partners.

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• Observation 2: – Standardized yet customizable business documents in

multiple formats are required– Request for Invoice (RFI), RFQ, Order– ASC X12, EDIFACT, OAGIS Business Object Document

(BOD)

• Observation 3:– Standardized description of collaboration steps is required

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Public and private processesB

suin

ess

Ser

vice

Impl

emen

tatio

n

BSI

Partner A Partner B

PrivateProcess

PrivateProcess

Public Process(Business Collaboration)

CPA

Bsu

ines

s S

ervi

ceIm

plem

enta

tion

BSI

Business Transaction

BSI=Business Service Interface

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• Observation 4: – Standardized description of each partners’s profile and the

contract between partners are required

• Observation 5: – Support for intermediaries is required

• Observation 6:– Support for verification of authority constraints is required

• Observation 7:– Standardized protocols for discovery are essential

• Observation 8:– Security is paramount

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The Move Toward Automation

• Each of the steps can benefit from automation.• Step 3 is of higher priority to business than others

steps• Assumption is therefore made to the automation of

Step 3.

Business contracts that set the business terms of the trade between the customer and supplier, as well as with any intermediaries already exist

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Performing the automation

Business Process andInformation Model

Mad

e in

UM

L(U

sing

UM

M)

BusinessProcess

Specification

BusinessDocument

Specification

Profile A Profile B

Agreement AB

BSI A BSI B

Role=Customer Role=Supplier

RegistryRepository

Map to XML

Sp

eci

fica

tion

in X

ML

The ebXML Framework at Work

Customer

Supplier

ebXMLRegistry

ProfilesProcessSpecifications

Registry Host1

2

Impl

emen

tatio

n

3

4

5

6

Intermediaries

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• A hypothetical scenario– One customer, a retail chain store in the United States, does

business transaction with one supplier, who is selling orchids in India

• Assumptions:– The supplier has been already identified by the customer, and a

business contract is already in place between the partner regarding the economic and legal aspect of the deal.

– The supplier and customer are already aware of the ebXML Registry where the business-process for ordering, shipping, and payment are store.

– The supplier and customer are notified of references to the relevant business-process specifications and profiles in the registry through the exchanged RFQ, RFI, or other means

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• The transaction process is outlined in the following steps:1. The supplier queries the ebXML registry for the orchid

purchase, orchid ship, and orchid payment process specifications that exist in the registry. The process specification contains business collaboration specified using the ebXML BPSS.

2. The supplier implements services and actions required to support the business collaborations. The supplier may implement new BSIs to facilitate invocation of the services and actions. The services for the role of supplier may be Purchase Service, and actions of this service may be Receive new purchase order, Send Confirmation or Query Status.

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3. The supplier creates a profile of the services implemented. To define the profile, the supplier uses the ebXML CPP schema. The supplier’s schema is then registered and stored in the registry.The registry implements the model and interfaces specified in ebXML Registry.

4. The customer looks into ebXML Registry and finds the CPPs of the supplier and any intermediary.

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5. The customer starts a negotiation with the supplier for finalizing the technical contract for flowers.– This step matches the supplier and customer CPPs, as

published in the ebXML Registry. The contract covers only technical details required to send and receive interoperable, secure, and reliable message between the customer and supplier to allow invocation of services and actions the supplier and customer implement. These details are embodied in a CPA.

– If intermediaries are involved, the negotiation is also carried out with each intermediary, by customer and supplier, and appropriate CPAs are created.

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6. Both customer and supplier modify existing BSIs or create new BSIs to satisfy the newly created CPA, if necessary. – The Purchase service is executed using the BSI at each partner.

– For shipping and payment of the money, similar BSIs are created at each partner involved, and appropriate business processes are carried between the customer and supplier through intermediaries.

– The supplier uses a shipping intermediary to ship the orchids to the customer, and the customer makes the payment for the orchids through an intermediary, such as an international trade bank.

Phases in the Use of the ebXML Framework

Customer

Supplier

ebXMLRegistry


Registry Host1

2

Impl

emen

tatio

n

3

Intermediaries

The implementation phase


The discovery phase

Customer

Supplier

ebXMLRegistry


Registry Host1

Impl

emen

tatio

n

4

5

Intermediaries


The runtime phase

Customer

Supplier

ebXMLRegistry


Registry Host

Impl

emen

tatio

n

6

Intermediaries

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Components of the ebXML Framework

• Defining how public business-process must be described using the ebXML BPSS standard.

• Defining the semantics of business documents that are exchanged in public processes using ebXML’s Core Component (ebCC) standard.

• Definition of services and the constraints in using the services using Collaboration Protocol Profile (CPP) defined in the ebXML CPPA standard.

• Description of the mutual agreement between the business partners – Collaboration Protocol Agreement (CPA) – to carry out the public business process. The schema for a CPA is also defined by ebXML CPPA standard.

• Protocols for registering, storing, and retrieving public business processes and associated business documents, and CPPs using the ebXML Registry standard.

• A standard way to send and receive messages between business partners, as defined in the ebXML Message specification.

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The ebXML standards

BPSS

Registry

Repository

CC

CPP

CPA

MS

Business Process Business Document

Dis

cove

ry

Par

tner

Pro

file

and

Agr

eem

ent

Message Service

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Syntax binding

Standard Business Documents

• Instead of a syntax-based approach, the ebXML Core Components standard takes a semantic-based approach to defining business document.

Core Component

Business InformationEntity

EDI MIG XML Schema Other

UML Context

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• A core component is a semantic element used for building the semantic structure of a business document.– E.g., the semantic structure of a purchase order will have semantic

elements such as item, quantify, and so on.

• A CC represent a single piece of business information, e.g., TAX.Amount.

• CC+context BIE (Business Information Entity)– A business context can be classified as belonging to a context

category.

– The ebXML CC standard specifies a few context categories, such as Industry Classification Category.

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• For example, when the Business Process Context is Purchasing, and the Geographical Context is EU, a BIE of VAT.Amount has the same structure and type as Tax.Amount.– Thus, when purchasing in EU countries, Tax.Amount is

interpreted as Value Added Tax described as VAT.Amount.

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• The ebXML CC standard specifies the core components in a core component catalog.

• Similarly a BIE catalog can be created to store BIEs.• The CCs and BIEs are described in UML and are stored in the

ebXML registry in the same format.• The UML representation of BIE may be converted into a variety

of syntactic representation ranging from EDIFACT MIG, XML Schema, XML DTD, and others.

• To find the unique semantics of each of the data elements appearing in a business document, a Unique Identifier (UID), which maps to an entry in the core component catalog , is used.

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Public Business Process Specification

• The ebXML BPSS provides an XML Schema for describing business processes.

• Advantages of XML-specified BP specifications– Being processed easily by computers

– Promoting unambiguous interpretation by software providers

– Improving interoperability

– Being less costly.

• A process specification expressed in BPSS is– declarative, and can be interpreted;

– Used to create a CPA, which, in turn, is used to created the BSI that is used to execute the business transactions.

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Discovery

• The business partners use the ebXML Registry to retrieve and store the business process descriptions, business documents, and CPPs.

• An ebXML Registry can be thought of as a warehouse, and a catalog for this warehouse.

• Registry Contents are classified by the Submitting Organization.• The classification can be done using one or more classification

scheme, each with its own taxonomy. An SO may submit its own taxonomy as well.

• E.g., NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) classification scheme can be used to– Register a company as a book-publishing company by registering

with the NAICS code of 511130.

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Discovery

• The ebXML Registry does not restrict the type of registry contents that an SO can register and store. Some examples of information:– Company name, brand name, products, and services.– EDI implementation guidelines– UML diagrams (for information models or business-process models

as in UMM)– Core component catalog– Business information entity catalog– Data dictionary– Business-process specifications– Collaboration protocol profiles and agreements– Images

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Partner Profiles and Agreements

• The ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement (CPPA) provides templates to define a CPP and a CPA using XML Schema.

• The CPP has two layers– A process-specification layer

• The information about a party and the business process specification the party supports

– A delivery-channel specification layer• The characteristics of the channels available for message delivery so

that the services described in the business-process specification cab be invoked.

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Partner Profiles and Agreements

• The process-specification layer contains the references to one or more process specifications.– The business process may be specified using ebXML BPSS.

– The business process may typically specified by an industrial consortium.

– The role the party is going to play in the business process is identified in the CPP

• The delivery-channel layer contains – a specification of the attributes of transport protocol (e.g., HTTP, or

SMTP) used in transporting messages, and

– the specification of document-exchange characteristics.

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Interoperable Messaging

• The interoperable messaging component of the ebXML framework is specified in the ebXML Message Service Specification (MS).

• The ebMS provides the syntax and semantics of the message structure, which consists of a message header, body and attachments.

• The message header includes information about– Who is sending the message,– Who is the message intended for,– Which CPA the message conforms to,– The message ID,– A Conversation ID, and so on.

• The header contains optional reliability messaging parameters– Whether an ack is required,– How many times a message needs to be retried in case a message is not

received, and so on

• The header also contains optional digital signatures to ensure its integrity.

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Interoperable Messaging

• The ebMS uses existing technology as much as possible.– SOAP 1.1 for message structure,

– SOAP with attachments and Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) specification for packaging, and

– XML signature for the digital signature.

• The ebMS specifies binding to HTTP and SMTP protocols for carrying the message.

• The message communication can be synchronous and asynchronous, and is defined independently of the underlying transport protocols.

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Binary Collaboration

Role Buyer： Role Seller：

Create Purchase Order

Create PO Update Notification

[SUCCESS] [FAILURE]

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[ITEM PENDING]

Request Purchase Order

[FAILURE]

[SUCCESS]

Purchase Order Request

Buyer Seller

[ITEM PENDING]

Process Purchase Order Update

Purchase Order Confirmation

Confirm Purchase Order

Notify Purchase Order Update

[SUCCESS]

[FAILURE]

Purchase Order Update Notification

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<<BusinessTransactionActivity>>

Initiating Role Buyer： Role Seller：

<<BusinessTransaction>>

Create Purchase Order

RequestPurchaseO

rderAction

<<RequestingB

usinessActivity>>

Confirm

PurchaseOrderA

ction<<R

espondingBusinessA

ctivity>>

Request Purchase Order Request：

AcceptanceAcknowledgement Signal

ReceiptAcknowledgementSignal

Response Purchase Order Confirmation：

AcceptanceAcknowledgement Signal

ReceiptAcknowledgementSignal