A Hybrid Framework for Automated and Adaptive E-Business Platforms

The automation of business transactions between corporations has been dominated by proprietary and inflexible EDI solutions for a long time. During the last years, novel XML-based standards emerged which have a wider scope than EDI but strongly differ with regard to granularity and industry-focus. Due to the abundance of many complex standards with limited diffusion among users and industries, especially small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have not yet managed to automate the execution of business transactions and to seamlessly interconnect their respective IT applications. In this work, we propose a novel approach which builds on a composite of existing standards and combines them towards a hybrid architecture facilitating electronic business transactions. The Web Service stack represents the technical foundation of this approach, while parts of the ebXML standard are leveraged to ensure a common understanding of business information and processes between trading partners. A central server acts as repository of formal agreements, common data and process modeling artifacts and allows for intermittent connectivity of the users. Decentral adapter components enable connecting heterogeneous legacy applications of the users to the central server. The resulting approach can thus be considered as hybrid regarding the degree of centralism involved and with respect to the combination of the Web services stack and the ebXML standard as an infrastructural foundation

ebXML: Global Standard for Electronic Business

Business-to-business integration is transforming the market and has already begun to increase the efficiency of those companies involved. EDI (Electronic Document Interchange) became very popular during 1970’s; Today EDI transactions total about $750 billion year. EDI is being used by 90% of Fortune 1000 companies. It has indeed become a dominant technology for the largest companies, on the other hand it has been adopted by less than 5% of small and medium sized companies in general and, of these, many use EDI only because their larger customers require it. The reason behind is that EDI is a difficult, complex technology to implement usually comes with high transactional cost. Hence it is suitable for large companies with large volume of transactions. EDI uses fixed, rigid and compressed data format that is difficult to decipher and debug. The data exchange in EDI happens in proprietary VAN (value added network) which is an expensive solution. EbXML (Electronic Business XML) envisioned creating a single global electronic marketplace where enterprises of any size and in any geographic location can meet and conduct business with each other through exchange of xml based messages. The XML (the Extensible Markup Language) has rapidly imposed itself as a popular format for exchange of information on the web. The very nature of XML is that it is a structured document format, in that it represents not only the information to be exchanged, but the metadata encapsulating its meaning. XML technology has potential to solve the existing problems in current EDI systems. Using ebXML, companies have a standard method to exchange business messages, conduct trading relationships, communicate data in common terms and define and register business processes. EbXML is designed to provide a simple way for companies to find one another and conduct business over the Web, allowing those with different platforms to speak a common language. EbXML targets to provide low cost solutions for small and medium enterprises as well as complex solution for large enterprises. This project attempts to implement a prototype of ebXML messaging service as per ebXML specification to obtain the insight look of feasibility and suitability of XML solution for EDI

XML schema design and management for e-Government data interoperability

Open Access JournalThis journal issue entitled: ECEG 2009postprin

BPM News - Folge 3

Die BPM-Kolumne des EMISA-Forums berichtet über aktuelle Themen, Projekte und Veranstaltungen aus dem BPM-Umfeld. Schwerpunkt der vorliegenden Kolumne bildet das Thema Standardisierung von Prozessbeschreibungssprachen und -notationen im Allgemeinen und BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services) im Speziellen. Hierzu liefert Jan Mendling von der Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien in aktuelles Schlagwort. Des weiteren erhalten Leser eine Zusammenfassung zweier im ersten Halbjahr 2006 veranstalteten Workshops zu den Themen „Flexibilität prozessorientierter Informationssysteme“ und „Kollaborative Prozesse“ sowie einen BPM Veranstaltungskalender für die 2. Jahreshälfte 2006

A framework for promoting interoperability in a global electronic market-space

The primary contributions to the area of electronic business integration, propounded by this thesis, are (in no particular order):  A novel examination of global Business-to-Business (B2B) interoperability in terms of a "multiplicity paradox" and of a "global electronic market-space" from a Complex Systems Science perspective.  A framework for an, integrated, global electronic market-space, which is based on a hierarchical, incremental, minimalist-business-pattern approach. A Web Services-SOA forms the basis of application-to-application integration within the framework. The framework is founded in a comprehensive study of existing technologies, standards and models for secure interoperability and the SOA paradigm. The Complex Systems Science concepts of "predictable structure" and "structural complexity" are used consistently throughout the progressive formulation of the framework.  A model for a global message handler (including a standards-based message-format) which obviates the common problems implicit in standard SOAP-RPC. It is formulated around the "standardized, common, abstract application interface" critical success factor, deduced from examining existing models. The model can be used in any collaboration context.  An open standards-based security model for the global message handler. Conceptually, the framework comprises the following:  An interoperable standardized message format: a standardized SOAP-envelope with standardized attachments (8-bit binary MIME-serialized XOP packages).  An interoperable standardized message-delivery infrastructure encompassing an RPC-invoked message-handler - a Web service, operating in synchronous and/or asynchronous mode, which relays attachments to service endpoints.  A business information processing infrastructure comprised of: a standardized generic minimalist-business-pattern (simple buying/selling), comprising global pre-specifications for business processes (for example, placing an order), standardized specific atomic business activities (e.g. completing an order-form), a standardized document-set (including, e.g. an order-form) based on standardized metadata (common nomenclature and common semantics used in XSD's, e.g. the order-form), the standardized corresponding choreography for atomic activities (e.g. acknowledgement of receipt of order-form) and service endpoints (based on standardized programming interfaces and virtual methods with customized implementations).Theoretical ComputingPHD (INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Modeling and using business collaborations

Abstract. Business processes interact with each other by sending and receiving messages; how such interactions take place (i.e. in which order and with which timing constraints) has to be defined in advance with a collaboration model, so the parties can be developed separately in conformity with it. With orchestration languages, however, the role of a collaboration model is that of an interface, so it is the run-time responsibility of the activities of the business process to guarantee that messages are exchanged in proper order and time. This paper motivates the need of run-time collaboration instances, which, by keeping the state of ongoing collaborations, relieve business processes of the burden of checking the conformity of the actual operations with the collaboration model. Moreover this paper presents a software environment, called bProgress, which we have developed so as to experiment with business processes and collaboration ones