On Tue, 2006-12-12 at 13:47, Mike Glendinning wrote: > --- In [email protected], "Steve Jones" > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > And I'm not betting against the internet (which is the bigger beast) > > what I'd say is that I'll go along with Bill Joy when he talked about > > multiple different webs, including the business web. There is no > > reason that each of these "webs" have to use the same technology > > approach as the human->human one. The syndication web is just part of > > the person->person web, hence the reason it _should_ work on the same > > technology stack. The business web needs to work on the same basis as > > businesses to today, this means a lack of trust between organisations, > > a high degree of formalism (driven by lawyers) and the importance of > > QoS. > > > > To help stop this list degenerating into "Steve Jones against the > world", let me just agree with Steve here and further emphasise this > last point, which is a current concern of mine.
Didn't realize we'd gotten to that point... :) > Most of what goes on in business today is actually quite "tightly > coupled". > > In particular, buying and selling stuff (that is, the general > commercial trading activity of most businesses) goes through a strict > legal process of contract formation and transaction execution between > two parties. This involves well-defined legal concepts such > as "invitation to treat", "offer", "acceptance" and "consideration". > > Businesses define the rules for such things very precisely and this > applies equally to B2B and B2C purchasing scenarios as well as > transactions of both small and large monetary value. > > When negotiating these contracts and executing transactions, businesses > pay close attention to the details of what is being said. Anything > proposed by the other party is subject to detailed scrutiny before > being incorporated into the contract terms or allowed to affect the > outcome of a transaction. > > A business would never knowingly execute a contract or transaction, > parts of which it did not understand. Of course consumers sometimes do > (for low-value items) but only out of laziness (and perhaps stupidity) > in reading the "small print" and this does cause them problems in > practice. > > In designing computer systems, we generally try to model the behaviour > of the business as closely as possible. It is arguable, therefore (and > strongly, in my view) that any computer system designed to automate > this kind of commercial business activity must be similarly "tightly > coupled". > > This would mean that messages exchanged as part of a transaction must > be fully understood by both parties, and rigorously checked for > accuracy and completeness. Each party must be sure that nothing is > being said by the other party that may materially affect [in the legal > sense] the outcome of the transaction. > > Both the messages themselves and their interactions must therefore be > carefully designed to align properly with the commercial [legal] > aspects of the activity they are automating. > > Of course this doesn't prevent the message definitions from > being "extensible" in any way, but it does suggest that the current > vogue for loose message definition, sloppy parsing and ignoring data > you don't understand may not be appropriate in many business contexts. > > -Mike Glendinning. > > P.S. Businesses do, of course in some areas and industries make use of > intermediaries to reduce the effects of this "tight coupling" (for > example in the various B2B purchasing exchanges), but even so both legs > of such brokered transaction remain tightly coupled as I have described. I left all of the above in because I think it's very true and relevant. I hope you don't think what I've been saying in my discussion with Steve means that I don't think those formal business relationships will or should exist. Of course I do. I'm also not saying that all of the message shouldn't be understood, but I am trying to make an argument about when and where that understanding takes place in the course of processing those messages. In the B2B scenario to support automated transactions, you MUST agree all of this stuff up front between all of the parties, regardless how you're planning to exchange those messages. The model I'm trying to explain simply makes the message content an active participant in the system rather than being simply payload. What I'm also trying to say is that the business semantics and information to be exchanged must be agreed, formally accepted and used under that agreement for cross-organizational communication, but there is room for providing flexibility in how those messages are processed so that the impact of a governance and policy change at the trading partner level requires minimal changes to the IT environments on either side of the fence. ast -- Andrew S. Townley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://atownley.org
