Spec Lets Apps Span Industries

ByTim Wilson

E-businesses next month will get their first glimpse of prototype data-sharing and transactional applications that can operate not only across companies, but also across industries.

The applications are based on ebXML, a proposed framework that bridges ordering, billing and other information that is formatted differently in various industries. Test applications will be on display at a meeting of the Electronic Business XML consortium on Aug. 7 in San Jose, Calif.

XML already is used in some industries to exchange documents and other data among companies that use disparate e-commerce applications. But thus far, there are no international standards that let companies in different industries share data across a common messaging infrastructure.

"J.P. Morgan, for example, may be able to communicate with banks and brokerages via XML standards defined by the financial services industry," explained Tower Group analyst Dushyant Shahrawat. "But when they go to buy paper, it's harder to use XML because the paper industry has different standards."

The specs will not only open up cross-industry e-commerce, but they'll also make e-business more accessible to small and midsize companies that can't afford EDI, said Simon Nicholson, a market strategist at Sun Microsystems. Sun is a charter member of a vendor consortium developing ebXML along with the United Nations CEFACT standards group.

At the meeting next month, Sun will demonstrate a prototype of its Java-based technology that lets applications transmit XML and non-XML messages--such as requests for quotes and inventory information, as well as conventional EDI data such as purchase orders and shipping notices--across Web infrastructures.

The technology is based on the ebXML Transport, Routing and Packaging spec, which defines standards for "enveloping" data and transmitting it via XML messages.

Other ebXML prototypes also are scheduled to be demonstrated at the meeting, but the final list wasn't available last week.

Beyond Boundaries

Although several industries have defined their own XML guidelines--such as the financial services-oriented FinXML and the IT-oriented RosettaNet--most of those are industry-specific vocabularies and infrastructures that don't translate well across sectors.

The ebXML group is attempting to create cross-industry standards by extending international CEFACT EDI specs with the more flexible XML, which can be used for human as well as machine-to-machine interaction.

"The EDI transactions were defined so concisely as to be unintelligible by humans," said Fulton Wilcox, director of information management at BOC Gases, a supplier of industrial gases. "XML will allow us to exchange more human-readable data so that we can do a wider variety of things with our partners."

The ebXML standards will let companies in different industries share data such as inventory information or requests for quotes under a common Web messaging format. Because they define the Web as the means of transport, the standards will be easier and less costly to deploy than EDI, which frequently requires special software and value-added networks.

Several companies, including IBM and Microsoft, are defining their own XML frameworks for linking disparate e-business applications. Microsoft's BizTalk already is being implemented by several companies, including Dell and CapitalStream, for cross-industry ordering, billing and other apps.

"We don't see BizTalk and ebXML as being in conflict," said Dave Turner, Microsoft's XML evangelist. "We are defining a means for exchanging data [via XML], but not the format of the data itself. We are not trying to define things like business processes, which ebXML is trying to tackle."

BizTalk and ebXML are different approaches to XML messaging, but Microsoft plans to address those differences when the ebXML standards are completed sometime in the middle of next year, Turner said. "We have customers that want to build interoperable XML applications today, and that needs to be built on something that exists today," he said.

Meantime, the ebXML group hopes to complete its specs and implementations by the second half of 2001. The group published draft specs for its technical architecture, core components and business process model earlier this month.

But some observers are skeptical of the group's ability to deliver the specs on time, considering the glacial pace of international IT standards efforts.

"I think 2002 is more likely than next year," said Tower Group analyst Shahrawat. "They have a huge mandate that involves reconciling the differences [in XML implementation] between industries, and they must develop a template for working across industries. That will take a lot of time."