Tim Cronin wrote:
> >1. Web hosted applications are C2B. EDI is B2B. So the two are used
> >for totally different and quite complementary applications.
>
> Web hosted applications aren't exclusively C2B. I've worked with a
> procurement system vendor, a transportation management system vendor and
> some visibility tools vendors. All of these products have both C2B and B2B
> XML interfaces.
We obviously have different definitions for B2B interoperations.
Here's the way I look at it:
When there is an application program at each end of the interoperation
(ie., two application programs, no humans), this is a B2B [business
system to business system] transaction.
To use a website requires a human using a web client (browser) and one
end and a web server at the other end transferring information to an
application program (ie one human and one application program). This is
a C2B [consumer to business system - more correctly, human to business
system H2B] transaction.
How do you describe a "B2B web site"? On my definition it would be a
contradiction in terms.
> >3. Why are all of the claims you make for data transported in XML
> >syntax via http) not equally true for data transported in an EDI syntax?
>
> I don't think that one could use http to post an edi formatted transaction
> and have the reciever be able to parse it with tools that are currently
> available.
Why not? At the receiving end, the EDI file would be handed to a
conventional EDI translator; an XML file would be handed to an XML
parser and then to an EDI translator (or the two combined). Whatever
syntax is being used (XML or EDI) the transport facilities of the
internet (in this case http) are only being used to move the transaction
file from one computer to another.
> I've never heard of anyone building an EDI centric repository. Not
> that it would be much different.
All the EDI "standards" bodies do nothing else and have done nothing
else for 30 years.
The EDI "standards" are simply a "repository" to describe the semantics
and the Message Implementation Guidelines are an industry agreed
equivalent of a DTD. All the XML people are doing is repeating what the
EDI people have been doing for the last 30 years and building the
transaction file using one of the XML syntaxes instead of using an EDI
syntax.
The EDI "repositories" (the richness of EDI "standards" is that there
are so many of them to choose from) are all, of course, fully workable.
Maybe in 30 year's time there might be an equivalent for XML? Firstly,
however, it will be necessary to narrow down the hundreds of ways of
representing semantics in XML to just one way (something all EDI
"standards" have already achieved) or there never will be a workable XML
"respository".
--
Ken Steel ICARIS Services
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Technology: http://www.icaris.net/
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