1. Doing eBusiness with XML
Ray Patel & Ravi Tadwalkar

2. Doing eBusiness with XML :
Agenda
• eBusiness Models
– Selling direct to the customer (B2C)
– Business to business (B2B) transactions
– Information and Content Exchange (ICE)
• EDI “business conversations”
• Why move from EDI syntax to XML ?
• From EDI to XML/EDI
• Future directions

3. What is eBusiness ?
• E-Business
– Is about information exchange
– Includes variety of supplemental messages
• Supply chain
– Coordination of a portfolio of assets, logistics,
information & operations involved in fulfilling
the final customer demand.
• Messaging via EDI
– Many web-sites have ERP back-ends being
automated to process orders either via EDI or
proprietary protocols & message formats.

4. eBusiness Models
– Selling direct to the customer
• In B2C transactions, customers use credit cards
while ordering directly- Disintermediation at work !
– Business to business transactions
• In B2B transactions, trading partners have contracts
with supplier- virtual inventory for procurement !
• Rip and read processing is the order of the day!
• XML in eBusiness aims to get rid of rip and read !
– Information and Content Exchange (ICE)
• focussing on extending the enterprise, streamlining
intra-enterprise processes, using infomediaries.
Browser Infomediary Suppliers

5. EDI “business conversations”
• EDI paved the way for eBusiness.
– Americans use ANSI/X12
– Rest of the world uses UN/EDIFACT
• EDI transaction or business conversation
– Uses dynamic messages shared using schemas.
– Schemas are detailed descriptions of format of
data objects mutually agreed upon by parties.
– Message is wrapped in an envelope having
header, segments and elements, and trailer.
– We use mapper software Mercator to translate
messages from and into internal formats.

6. Why move from EDI to XML ?
• When implementing an eBusiness solution
with XML and EDI, it is called XML/EDI.
• XML tagging syntax is much more verbose,
but simplifies integration of messages,
allowing additional information to be used
by the process in addition to data itself.
• Using XML, we can develop the XML/EDI
message formats that need not be translated!

7. Moving from EDI to XML/EDI
• An example of XML/EDI
– Original EDI X12 header :
• ISA^00^ ^ZZ^1019000
ZZ^COLONIAL^980120^1712^U^00200^0000000
05^0^P^>
– The ASC X12 compliant XML/EDI header :
• <ISA AuthorizationQual=‘00’ Authorization=‘’
SecurityQual= ‘00’ Security=‘’ SenderQual=‘ZZ’
Sender=‘1019000’ ReceiverQual=‘ZZ’ Receiver=‘
COLONIAL ’ XchgDate=‘ 980120 ’ XchgTime= ‘
1712’ StdAgency=‘U’ StdVersion=‘ 00200’
AckReq=‘0’ Usage=‘P’ >000000005</ISA>

8. Why XML?
• XML is for loose-coupling
– no recordset sends
– no parameter passing
– not everything is going to be web based!
• Applying XML in eBusiness
– Message Headers
• Multi-tiered Routing Issues
– Message Body
• Using existing Schemas

9. Why XML?
• XML is for loose-coupling
– no recordset sends
• Why return VB collections, database cursors, etc. ?
• Send self describing data as an XML page instead!
– no parameter passing
• Why bother about pass by value or reference ?
• Send XML page- XML parser will help the other
side of the world!
– And not everything is going to be web based!
• E.g. doing behind-the-web, batch mode operations!
– EDI is tightly-coupled, XML loosely-coupled!

10. Why XML?
• Applying XML in eBusiness
– Involves XML message travelling between a
customer and a supplier. XML is used at every
application tier, throughout the supply chain!
– Message Headers
• Multi-tiered Routing Issues
– Routing, Security, Error flagging, Transaction identity,
Batching, Tracking, Transport independence, etc.
– Message Body
• Using existing Schemas
– XML data involves reuse of the domain vocabularies;
since the self describing XML page is for humans too!

11. Future directions
• Agents
– Agent is component that independently acts to
accomplish goal of user or another component.
– Agents allow the XML/EDI systems to be self-
adaptive and able to handle large expansion of
exchanges without excess human intervention.
– We typically use agents in tracking transaction
content, to send an alert to support staff about
the potential failure conditions in EDI input.

12. Future directions
• Templates
– Templates are useful in establishing a common
negotiation protocol at the middle tier.
– Templates are dynamically created by agents,
using message brokering techniques.
• Message Brokers
– “Hub and spoke” architecture for EAI
• Brokering messages between one or more target
entities, networks, middleware, apps or systems,
regardless of how the message is represented!
• Use message translation, rules management and
intelligent routing mechanisms.