Re: ebXML Passes Critical Interoperability Milestone

Wed, 13 Dec 2000 12:54:18 -0800

Good questions Ken. Flame on.....
Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Steel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2000 12:11 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: ebXML Passes Critical Interoperability Milestone
Alan Kotok wrote:
> In the U.S., the median size of printing companies is 20
> employees. Only the largest printers of magazines and catalogs can afford
> to use traditional EDI. Something like ebXML offers these small companies
> the opportunity to benefit from business data exchange, where before it was
> well beyond their resources.
Alan,
Thanks for a more detailed answer.
What problems (and costs) that stop the wider adoption of EDI are solved
by using XML?
How does XML achieve these dramatic improvements over EDI so that XML
brings automated B2B interoperation within the scope of the resources of
small 20-employee organisations?
More particularly, how does XML avoid the problem of upfront discussion
between the parties defining the interchange structure and then
customising the implementation for each pair of trading partners?
The problems are different, but XML uses tags to identify data. Doesn't
that cause a different set of big problems:
1. A language must be selected for the tag. Doesn't that preclude XML
from being used in a multilingual environment?
2. Doesn't prior discussion need to take place between the parties and
the implementation need to be customised for different tag names used to
identify the same data in the different XML (DTD) implementations of
each trding partner?
3. Doesn't the receiving party have to cope with different tagging names
and the burgeoning differences continuing to emerge in the way the data
semantics are represented and tagged in the XML programming language?
Does the small user have to learn to program in XML or call in
high-priced consultants to implement each trading partner?
4. How can the small end user customise the implementation for all these
differences in tagging and semantic representations for each trading
partner and the use of XML still fit within the available resources of
the smaller organisations?
5. How is the small user able to get its application software package
customised for each of the DTDs and tagging/semantic structures demanded
by each of the larger trading partners?
6. How does an existing EDI user implement XML without having to double
up on the overhead and running costs (translators, training,
reprogramming applications to select the EDI or XML stream depending on
the trading partner, cope with two different sets of operating problems
and complexities etc)?
Regards,
Ken
--
Ken Steel
ICARIS Services Amsterdam, Melbourne, Silicon Valley
Research results: http://www.icaris.net/
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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