Procurement Vendors Tussle Over XML

By RICHARD KARPINSKI

The Extensible Markup Language has the potential to smooth electronic commerce, but only if vendors and large users can all get along.

In the e-procurement space, at least for now it seems, competition is taking priority over cooperation.

Yesterday, Ariba introduced Commerce XML (cXML), a set of XML document type definitions, or DTDs, to help define the exchange of transaction information between buyers and suppliers over the Internet. The cXML spec supports a variety of business processes including purchase orders, change orders, acknowledgments, status updates, ship notifications and payment transactions.

"XML clearly will become the de facto way of computer communications over the Internet, and the standard way that business-to-business commerce will be conducted," said Dave Rome, Ariba's vice president of marketing.

The Ariba XML solution competes most directly with an alternative being developed by Ariba's largest rival, CommerceOne, which recently bought XML vendor Veo Systems. Veo's Common Business Library (CBL), which is written in XML, was recently turned over to the CommerceNet consortium, which is using it as part of its eCo Framework specification for business-to-business commerce.

Meanwhile, the slow-to-start Open Buying on the Internet (OBI) standard, which defines a set of processes for Web-based procurement, is being re-cast as an XML application, and another industry group is looking to define traditional EDI in XML terms.

When asked about cXML, Murray Maloney, chair of CommerceNet's eCO working group said, "I don't know. They haven't revealed anything to me. I was attempting to have a discussion [with Ariba] but it didn't bear any fruit. As far as I can tell they are not sharing this with anybody."

As for users following the situation, Maloney said, "I'd be very concerned. I am not interested in proprietary specs. I think it would be harmful for two groups of companies to come up with something that's competitive."

For users looking to conduct business-to-business transactions over the Internet, the lack of a single standard means at minimum tracking multiple technologies until they merge or figure out how to work together. For early deployers, it could also mean having to create work-arounds to share information between different XML-flavored products and catalogs.

"We'll see hundreds of XML-based data format standards emerge, not only out of vendors but out of trade associations and industry groups," said Erica Rugullies, senior industry analyst with Giga Information Group.

Rugullies said formats with the strong backing of industry groups and large users have the best chance of success, but that a "big gorilla" could emerge among the vendor community and force others to follow its formats.

"The key thing is this is all being built on a common standard. That's something we never had in the EDI space," said Geoffrey Bock, analyst with Patricia Seybold Group. "With XML, the intelligence for interpreting and parsing the content of a document resides in the document itself. That's a very different way to approach standards, and it really stems from the new style of computing on the Web."

Ariba introduced cXML along with 40 supporters, including e-commerce vendors such as Extricity Software, Saqqara Systems, Sterling Commerce, Vignette and webMethods.

Ariba also lined up some of its customers as backers, including e-trading powerhouses like barnesandnoble.com, Office Depot and Staples on the supplier side, and Chevron, Cisco Systems and Bristol-Myers Squibb on the buyer side.

Ariba will begin pilot projects using cXML, as well as publish the cXML spec, in March, the company said. The availability of a standard for describing catalog content will fuel the move of the bulk of catalog content out from behind the buyer firewall and onto the open Internet, said Ariba's Rome.

"We're seeing the transition now. Within a month or two the shift will begin and will see infrequently sourced items pushed out and accessed via the Internet," Rome said.

Ariba's main competitor, CommerceOne, believes its XML solution has a brighter future, in part because it is based on next-generation XML Schema technology under development at the W3C, which is being developed to replace the more traditional DTD approach used by Ariba, said Mark Thomas, director commerce platform marketing for Commerce One.

"Using XML DTD formats has been widely recognized as an incomplete approach," said Thomas.

Lacking a true standard, users will need to find ways to translate and transform documents that may use XML, albeit slightly different flavors. One option is the Extensible Stylesheet Language, or XSL, which in addition to preparing XML documents for publication can be used to do transformations, CommerceOne's Thomas said.

"I imagine that a cXML business document in the Ariba environment, when it encounters a Commerce One hub, will be able to be interpreted by that hub," said analyst Bock.

"Long term there will exist multiple XML formats," Thomas added. "We're all going to have to embrace the diversity of documents. There isn't going to be a single document set."

Ariba's Rome agreed. "We're not asserting these [cXML] DTDs will become the standards of the industry. This will all sort out. But standards bodies can be slow. At some point suppliers and buyers told us we've got to get this thing moving."