Product definition

1. Product definition E-Biz central is a technology platform aimed at Software developer community, and is used to build & deploy Internet based Open Business Applications. E-Biz central is not a domain specific platform, rather it provides a comprehensive and solid technology platform for building robust domain specific applications, which are tightly integrated in a loosely coupled environment like Internet. With its rich and robust platform independent technology features, it can tremendously cut down on the development costs and time and allows the software developers to build Agile & Collaborative business applications.

2. Collaborative Business Scenario Supplier Co (Ex. Tyres Manufacturer) SAP Windows-NT/2000 Open Business Application Supplier Co (Ex. Steel Manufacturer) Bank Co Manufacturing Co. (Ex. Car Manufacturer) Banks2000 ORACLE Any ERP/ Custom Applicaiton Windows-NT UNIX Branch - n Insurance Co Visual Basic C++/Java UNIX/Windows/Solaris/Linux Solaris Windows-98/XP Call Center Co SIEBEL Windows-NT/2000

3. Technical challenges in Collaborative e-Business Application development • Business operation exposing & invocation • Business document exposing & generation • Caller Application Identity • Caller Application Authorization • User Identity • User Authorization • Access Control • Single Sign On support • Data transmission security • Distributed Platform-Independent business transactions • Platform & Language Independent API • Compatibility with SOAP, XML-RPC & other HTTP based Remote business operation Invocation protocols • Business Logic implementation issues • Multi threaded business operations • Synchronizing business operations • Delayed/Queued business operations • Delayed dependent business operations • Representation Neutral Dynamic front-end • screens

4. E-Biz Central Technical Architecture Overview E-Biz Central Developer Studio developer ARRP Server • ARRP-TCP/IP Transaction Manager Organization Manager User Manager AFT eBEX End User Web Browser • HTTP Business logic e-Biz Central platform Action handler Document Manager Web Server Developer Manager Site Manager • ARRP-TCP/IP E-Biz Web request listener • ASP • CGI • ISAPI Trust Relation Manager E-Biz Engine Action Manager Ebiz central Object store

5. Collaborative e-Business Applications using E-Biz Central Supplier Co - Tyres e-Biz Central SAP Buyer Co - Cars [ ARRP – TCP/IP & XML ] Any ERP/ Custom Applicaiton e-Biz Central [ ARRP – TCP/IP & XML ] Supplier Co - Steel ORACLE Internet/ Intranet e-Biz Central Buyer Co – Branch:1 PeopleSoft Web Server [ ARRP – TCP/IP & XML ] e-Biz Central [ HTTP & XML ] Buyer Co - Dealer:1 VisualBasic [ ARRP – TCP/IP & XML ] Web Browser e-Business Explorer C++/VB/Java ARRP Client [ Single Sign On Process ] [ End-User Or Customer ] [ Developer ]

6. E-Biz Central Technology features Main Technology Features • ARRP (Action Request Response • Protocol) • e-Biz XML-API • e-Biz XML Server Pages • Distributed Transaction Protocol • Multi level Trust Relation technology • Single Sign On process • Business Operation technologies Business Operation technologies • Multiple Action Types • Immediate Actions • Deferred Independent Actions • Deferred Dependent Actions • Scheduled Actions • Chained Actions • Other technology features • Action result caching • Multiple URL routing for a • single Action • Session Management • Call Context Management • Remote development features

7. ARRP Action Request Response Protocol is an efficient and reliable Application-level client/server based request/response protocol. This protocol can be used by Software-developers for creating robust cross-platform and cross-language distributed applications. Currently implementations of ARRP server and ARRP client  re available in various programming languages. Alpha versions of ARRP Server & Client support programming languages like C++, Microsoft Visual Basic, Java, CLR based languages of Microsoft .Net framework and for C++ & C programmers on HP-UNIX,LINUX & SUN SOLARIS. Application - 1 [ C++/Java/Visual Basic ] Application - 2 Business function/component Callback function [ TCP/IP & XML ] ARRP Server ARRP Client ARRP provides a simple & elegant solution for cross-platform & cross-language invocation of application functionality. It provide Universal access to your applications functionality using well defined and well-stabilized Internet protocol, TCP/IP and widely accepted universal data format, XML. ARRP uses a technique called call-back mechanism for invoking an application defined function, when ever it receives a request from any application using ARRP Client software. ARRP can invoke functions in programs written in C++, Java, and Visual Basic. This is possible because ARRP Server (64kb in size) can be embedded within an application and runs parallely on separate threads along with your application without disturbing it.

8. e-Biz XML-API XML-API is a technology that allows an application built on e-Biz Central to expose & share its functionality with other applications thru any Network supporting TCP/IP (like Internet, Intranet, etc). The functionality exposed thru XML-API can be accessible from any platform & any programming language supported by ARRP protocol. Software service & product developers can use this technology to allow easy integration of their solutions and/or products with other software applications running on same or desperate platforms. Developers can even integrate applications built on desperate programming languages & technologies. For example if an ERP product development company needs to expose the functionality of their product to other ERP products like SAP,ORACLE, etc and to any other custom software applications, they can do so easily using e-Biz Central XML-API technology without disturbing the architecture or code of their existing product. In business applications, the XML-API technology will be extremely useful and efficient in allowing the applications built on e-Biz Central to participate in Collaborative e-Business processes. e-Biz Central provides built in support for invoking the business operation exposed thru XML-API from non-ARRP client applications that use SOAP protocol. e-Biz Central can also convert a SOAP based Web-Service into e-Biz Central business operations, thus allowing the developers to use SOAP based Web-Services as if they were e-Biz Central native business operations.

9. e-Biz XML Server Pages • e-Biz central XML Server Pages (e-Biz XSP) is a technology for creating dynamic front-end screens/ documents using e-Biz Central XML-API. • Using e-Biz Central XSP, developers can create front-ends documents at runtime based on certain business operations. In e-Biz Central a Document forms the User interface between an End-User and the application built on e-Biz Central. In real world scenarios most of the information that forms the User interface is generated at runtime by executing a business operation. e-Biz Central allows developers to attach a list of business operations to a document, and it will execute them whenever the document is being generated. • The entire process of creating dynamic elements of information & User Interface is thru issuing simple XML based queries to the e-Biz Central runtime using ARRP from any programming language preferred by the developer & supported by the ARRP protocol. Thus the name e-Biz Central XML Server Pages. • key advantages of using e-Biz Central XSP • The technical process of generating the documents during run-time is not dependent on a particular Web-Server or a particular Platform. • Developers can use the programming language of their choice including C/C++ rather than limiting them selves to scripting languages. Using native programming languages like Java, C, C++ & VB will allow developers to take advantage of efficient OS features like Multi-threading to generate the different parts of the document parallely. • The documents generated using e-Biz Central XSP are representation neutral. It means once the developer generates a document dynamically in e-Biz Central, it is the task of e-Biz Central to convert it into an HTML document or Platform dependent GUI document or XML document or any other possible front-end representations supported by e-Biz Central run-time.

10. Distributed Transaction Protocol e-Biz Central Transactions are fundamentally different from that of the traditional Transaction processing monitors (TPMs). Traditional Transaction processing monitors (TPM) provides a runtime environment for the business operations to operate under Transactions spanning multiple data sources. These TPMs requires the business logic to implement certain interfaces and the data sources to implement certain Transaction protocols like (XA-Transaction protocol, OLE-Transaction protocol, etc.). And further the Physical Transactions are created and maintained by the data source, but not the TPM. In e-Biz Central a Transaction doesn’t represent a Transaction instance of any data source, rather it is a group of Voter business operations, which are logically related, and are defined using e-Biz Central Actions with a corresponding set of Commit/Abort Actions for each Voter Action. e-Biz Central creates, executes, and maintains the Transactions. The business logic need not implement any special interfaces to participate in the Transaction, and also the data sources, which are used inside the business logic, need not implement any Transaction protocols. e-Biz Central guarantees the completion (commit or abort) of a Transaction even in the event of system failures. e-Biz Central For Application-1 e-Biz Central For Application-2 Application - 1 Application - 2 Business function/component [ Cross Platform Transaction Server ] Business function/component Windows/UNIX/SOLARIS/LINUX Windows/UNIX/SOLARIS/LINUX [ TCP/IP & XML ] [ TCP/IP & XML ] [ TCP/IP & XML ]

11. Multi level Trust Relation technology e-Biz central Multi-level Trust Relation technology allows an application built on e-Biz Central to expose & share its functionality with one or more applications built on e-Biz Central in a trusted manner. e-Biz Central applications can allow non e-Biz Central applications to access their functionality using ARRP, but the accessing application cannot be Authenticated.  In practical real world scenarios, if a business organization is exposing its critical business operations to the outside applications, it needs to identify, Authenticate & Authorize the calling application before accepting the request for business operation execution. And, since the calling application can be running on a different platform from that of the exposed application, it is difficult to built in cross-platform application identification & authorization techniques. It requires significant amount of time & cost to build such technologies into an application, and moreover the developers has to build these technologies from case to case. e-Biz Central Multi-level Trust Relation technology allows developers to expose and share different objects of the e-Biz Central applications including active business documents, business operations, business components (logically related group of business operations), User Groups & Users, with the other e-Biz Central applications in a trusted manner.

12. Single Sign-On Process Single Sign-On Process allows the End-User of an Application built on e-Biz Central, to access the business objects of one or more Applications built on e-Biz Central by logging in only once into his own application. This technology eliminates the need for producing User credentials like User-Id & Password for each and every process/application involved in a collaborative e-business process. Single Sign-On process also shields the user from the Network of Underlying business processes involved in a transaction thus giving a more unified view of the business processes. Single Sign-On process in e-Biz Central uses Distributed Authentication technology to allow an End-User, access to resources of networked business processes using Single login. Business processes are not required to share their Users credentials like User-Id & Password with other business processes involved in collaborative e-business process. Rather e-Biz Central Run-times of the Collaborative e-Business processes will co-ordinate with each other to give access to the networked resources for end-user using single login. Buyer Application Supplier Application Bank Application Main Order List document Sub Order status document Account Information E-Biz Central E-Biz Central E-Biz Central Buyer Application B A Login document [ End-User Or Customer ] E-Biz Central

13. Business Operation technologies e-Biz central Business Operation technologies provide a platform & programming language independent implementation of core technologies required by Software developers to build roust, reliable & scalable business applications. These technologies are broadly classified into four categories Threading Synchronization Queuing Business Operation Persistence Threading allows an application to scale to higher loads and utilize the resources of the hardware and OS to the optimum extent. Synchronization techniques are used to synchronize the operation of multiple threads on the same resource and play an important role in maintaining the Integrity of the data. Queuing allows to defer the low priority business transactions by queuing them for later execution and increases the throughput of the application for high-priority business transactions. Business Operation Persistence will make a business application more reliable by persisting business operation execution requests till the request is successfully routed to the appropriate business logic component. This facility also supports transaction/action execution requests that are dependent on a other transaction/action execution requests and need to be persisted for longer period (days/weeks, etc) before they are routed to the business logic component. e-Biz Central provides developers,a non-programmatic, platform & programming language independent way of using the above mentioned technologies in their applications.

14. Applications of E-Biz Central • 1. Stand-alone Business Applications. • These types of applications are generally used by single individuals. • 2. Web-based Distributed Business Applications. • a. These types of applications are generally used by small-average scale business organizations for Automating their business processes. • b. Giving accessibility for their business information to their employees & Customers from any where in the World using any device. • 3. Web-based Collaborative Business Applications. • This type of applications are generally used by average-large scale business organizations for • a. Automating their business processes. • b. Giving accessibility for their business information to their employees & Customers from any where • in the World using any device. • c. Integrating their business process with the business process of their Partners, Suppliers & Dealers. • Note: The following scenarios are possible for the Applications & Products • for which Source code is available and/or the Applications & Products that are programmable using API’s and/or Component technologies like COM, CORBA, etc. • 4. Providing Multi-User support & Access Control facilities for existing Business Applications & • Business automation Products like ERP, CRM, SCM etc. • 5. Web enabling existing Business Applications & Business automation Products like ERP, CRM, SCM etc. • 6. Providing Platform & Language Independent XML based API for existing Business Applications & • Business automation Products like ERP, CRM, SCM etc, so that they can be easily integrated with • other applications and participate in a Collaborative-Digital-Business-Process.

15. e-Business Development Studio (e-BUDS) e-BUDS is a flexible GUI application built in Java for developing & maintaining applications on e-Biz Central platform. e-BUDS has built in support for Remote development & application maintenance, which will tremendously cut down the cost of travel & post-development support.

16. Road-Map for E-Biz Central e-Biz Central was designed & developed from ground-up, to be a stable & secure Technology platform for developing & deploying Open business applications. Its current features provides developers with all the technology support for developing business applications in a platform & programming language Independent manner. Very soon e-Biz Central will support Real Time Communication services like Audio/Video conferencing rooms, etc. thru its optimized browser, e-Business Explorer (e-BEX). This will allow end-users of the e-Biz Central based applications to interact with the application & other end-users in a secure & flexible way. Features of e-Business Explorer e-Business Explorer • Highly Secure data transfer • customized for e-Biz Central Apps • 2d-3d Graphic library • Comprehensive Charts & Graphs • library • Virtual Conferencing Rooms with • following communication facilities • 1. Audio conferencing • 2. Video conferencing • 3. Text-Chat • 4. Digital White board • 5. File Transfer • 6. Document exchange - e-Business Explorer is an Optimized browser for the End-Users to interact with the Applications built on e-Biz Central.

17. e-Biz Central Real-Time Communication (RTC) Services e-Biz Central based Application RTC – Permission Table Conference Room type – Services allowed User One-One Global Conference Room One-Many Site Level Many-Many Organization Level Audio Video Text-Chat File transfer White board Active Document Exchange e-Business Explorer (e-BEX)