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Kick-off European ebXML Interoperability Pilot Project. Brussels, 2002-09-25 Pim van der Eijk. Overview. CEN ISSS eBES Vendor Forum Background and status Report on Questionnaire Objectives, scope, capabilities, interests Moving forward Determine structure and timeline
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Kick-off European ebXML Interoperability Pilot Project Brussels, 2002-09-25 Pim van der Eijk
Overview • CEN ISSS eBES Vendor Forum • Background and status • Report on Questionnaire • Objectives, scope, capabilities, interests • Moving forward • Determine structure and timeline • Make working arrangements
CEN ISSS eBES Vendor Forum • CEN ISSS eBES workshop initiative: • Incompatibility of B2Bi systems • Market needs for combined XML and EDI solutions • Vendors need to give clarity on strategy to users • SME involvement • Lack of participation of European vendors in ebXML • Defend European point of view in the global ebXML arena • Promote participation in UN/CEFACT and OASIS work
Mission and process • Vendor Forum Mission statement: “Mobilizing Vendor involvement in the standardization process, the awareness and the implementation of ebXML in Europe.” • CEN workshop process • Similar to OASIS Technical Committee (TC) • Delivers “CEN Workshop Agreements” (CWA)
Tasks and projects • Tasks: • Education, awareness, standardization, technical assessment and migration • Projects: • ebXML interoperability project
Status • First meeting (March): • Brainstorm session • Initial idea for ebXML interoperability project • Second meeting (June): • Decision to focus on pilot • Request to OASIS to endorse and support • OASIS supports: • Internationalization of member base • Facilitate access to technical work
Status (cont’d) • Invitation letter to participate (August) • States some participation requirements • Some twenty respondents • Questionnaire (September) • Ten respondents • Input for scoping discussion, reported on today
Today • Kick-off meeting: • Decide on objectives and scope • Understand each other’s interests and capabilities • Form project teams • Make working arrangements, including decision on commitment • Requirements: • Vendors to commit to contribute resources • Users to help provide business cases
Today (cont’d) • Format: • Plenary presentation of results • Interactivity, please ! • Make working arrangements: • Perhaps split up in groups for discussion • Wrap up
Objectives of the questionnaire • Understand the requirements of all participants before defining and starting the project • Determine which ebXML modules vendors: • already implement in their products. • want to get from other participants, or develop in this project. • want to verify interoperability for. • Get input on business scenario for demonstrator • From (customers of) vendors • From users and industry groups
CIDX / Solvay (BE) Cronos / XT-I (BE) Dan Net (DA) EAN (BE) Excelon (US/NL) Seeburger (GE) Software AG (GE/NL) Sun Microsystems (US/CH) TIE (NL) XML Global (CA) Respondents
Sections in the questionnaire • Objectives and scope • Level of support for ebXML modules in your products • Priority for ebXML modules • Other relevant software • Case studies • Payload (content) formats • Liaisons • Process and IPR
Objectives and goals: score • Strongly disagree • Disagree • Agree conditionally • Agree • Strongly agree
Disagreements • “Leading in Europe” and “Complementary products/services” • EAN: ? has global (not European) focus, user organization • CIDX: ? not applicable, user organization • “Focus on mature parts, esp. ebMS” • Sun: CPPA and BPSS as important as ebMS • Cronos: don’t just work on ebMS, rest is important too • XML Global: start with the registry
Disagreements (cont’d) • “Limited resources, use (pre)sales budget” (3.6): • Seeburger (2): interoperability is first of all about implementation, sales/marketing comes next • TIE (2): some participants will need to do a lot of technical work, implementations are far from plug-and-play yet • “Deliver demonstrator” (4.3): • XML Global (3): focus is to show that ebXML methodology is useful and relevant
Disagreements (cont’d) • Migration scenarios (avg. 3.4) • XML Global (2): work from registry, via CPP, to integration with back-end systems of real users • Sun (2): focus on SME user not EDI user • Find funding (4.1) • TIE (2): first do the technical interoperability work, otherwise project will fail
Objectives and goals: summary (tentative, my interpretation) • Start with limited scope and duration • mainly marketing exercise for some • but serious investment, technical effort for others • Aim for a demonstrator that • is a real-life case study • is delivered and marketable in summer 2003 • demonstrates what ebXML is designed for • might help a consortium apply for FP-6 funding • Get a basic infrastructure operational quickly • but understand that some of us are at an early stage still • leveraging components from other participants
Support for ebXML scores • No implementation, or alpha version for internal use only; • Partial implementation, not generally available, does not yet have the maturity of a product, usable under strict conditions; • Implementation available, but not yet tested for interoperability, usable for initial pilot projects but not for production use; • Reasonably complete, usable in end-user projects, but interoperability not yet verified; • Complete, commercially available implementation that has passed interoperability / conformance testing and is being used in production settings.
Module support summary • Participants in all three categories • Advanced, intermediate, just starting • Emphasis clearly on messaging and collaboration protocols • Other modules supported by “specialists” Participants collectively implement significant parts of ebXML already !!
Module priority scores • Unimportant, the project should not waste its time looking into this; • Not important, but nice to have; • Moderately important, if possible the project should have a look at this; • Very important, the project should make an strong effort to be able to provide this; • Essential, the project is not a success unless this module is implemented;
Module priority summary • Broad agreement that focus should be on ebXML messaging • Configured by Collaboration Protocol Agreements • Much less agreement on registry, core components, BPSS • Vendors that are “further ahead” tend to be more cautious CC and BPSS
Other software • CIDX: CIDX tools • Cronos: transformation • Dan Net: transformation • Excelon: BPM, modelling • Seeburger: EAI, transformation, workflow • Sun: UBL concepts • Software AG: XML server, EAI, transformation • TIE: integration, transformation, forms • XML Global: Security, transformation, message store, payload generation
“We wish that this project is very closely aligned to real world issues, and so test scenarios and payloads and such should come directly from end customers and vertical organizations” (Sun) • “It is important that this is a real world demonstrator and as such the ebXML aspects must be interfaced to demonstrate a real end-end, possibly multi-party, system” (TIE)
User participation today • CIDX: • Chemical Industry XML B2B standard • Raymond Betz (Solvay, Brussels) has offered to discuss a potential case study • EAN: • Involved in OASIS interoperability work • EAN UK (e-Centre) has an ebXML project under way • Bolivar Pereira (EAN International, Brussels)
Other suggestions • From participants: • Seeburger: Papinet • Software AG: Accord, Opentrans • Sun: have a high-level scenario; Sabre? • At a later stage: • CEN EEG9 (healthcare informatics) • Government and tax agencies, XBRL • “Some other large multinational companies”
Message payload scores • Irrelevant • Somewhat important • Important • Very important • Essential
Payload format summary • Clear preference for UN/EDIFACT • EAN-UCC XML as next best • No strong preference for other formats • Plus, lack of agreement Decision on payload format is dependent on business process and should be based on the demonstrator scenario
OASIS IIC TC: interoperability guidelines • Drummond Group for UC-Council: (commercial) “reference implementation” • Second series completes in November • Other ebXML pilots worldwide • Relevant project teams in UN/CEFACT and OASIS
OASIS ebXML Implementation, Interoperability Conformance TC • Chaired by Jacques Durand (Fujitsu) • Work on interoperability guidelines and automated test facilities • Now moving to industry deployment (templates for EAN-XML, RosettaNet) • Want to coordinate various initiatives • US (Drummond Group, OAG/NIST), Japan (ECOM), Europe
OASIS IIC (cont’d) • Main input to our project • Basic ebXML interoperability guidelines • Working on • “core test suite” synthesized from various initiatives • Definition of “interoperability profiles” • Template mechanism for project-specific extensions • Generalized from EAN input • Deliverable from our project to IIC: • A deployment template for EDIFACT? • Liaison via Steve Yung (Sun), Bolivar Pereira (EAN)
Other liaisons • OASIS ebXML Messaging TC • Ian Jones, chair (BT, UK) • Expressed willingness and interest to support • ebXML joint coordination and marketing teams • Research projects • Started talking to OpenXchange • Other DG Information Society projects
Process • Vendor Forum is a project of eBES • eBES is a CEN ISSS “workshop” • By default, should adopt CEN process and IPR policy • OASIS endorsed and supported • Joint membership condition • CEN, OASIS to work out formal relation
Intellectual property • According to questionnaire, there are no objections to royalty-free license • “This is ebXML” • Vendors will retain all rights over their products • No automatic endorsement by others • Suggestion: transfer IP to OASIS IIC • So there is one place maintaining this • Discussion topic for CEN ISSS and OASIS
Moving forward Here the discussion should become very interactive …
Proposal: Two main work areas • 1: Messaging interoperability related: • Bottom up, technical focus • Start with ebMS and ebCPPA • Sort out infrastructure issues • Leverage related projects and experience • 2: Business-oriented, demonstrator related: • Top down, business process-oriented • Start with UML use case, activity etc. diagrams towards BPSS collaborations, business transactions • Adopt an existing payload, e.g. EDIFACT
XML Global: registry-centric approach • Start with ebXML registry hosted by CEN • Participants start adding CPPs of real organizations • Participants implement BSI for those CPPs • Some CPA negotiation ? • … ? • Offering XML Global Registry free of charge • ebRR 2.0 compliant implementation • Can be viewed as 3rd work area, orthogonal to other two?