ebXML

The New Global Standard for Doing Business Over the Internet

ISBN:0-7357-1117-8

Authors:

Alan Kotak is a technology, business, and public policy reporter. He currently serves as editor for E-Business Standards Toady and writes frequently for the information technology trade press including Electronic Commerce World magazine, XML.com, and CMP TechWeb. Mr. Kotak previously served with the Data Interchange Standards Association and at Graphics Communication Association (now IDEAlliance) where he worked extensively with EDI standards for electronic commerce.

David R.R. Webber is the Vice-President for Business Development for XML Global Technologies. He is a co-founder of the XML/EDI Group. Mr. Webber lectures frequently in North America, Europe, and Asia. He has more than 20 years experience in implementing business systems and is the US patent holder for advanced EDI software technologies.

Pages:

339 pages

Publisher:

New Riders Publishing

Intended Audience:

This title has two clear audiences. Part I of the book is designed for the business executive. The executive can read the three chapters that make up the first part of the book and come away with an understanding of what ebXML is and why it makes sense from a business perspective.

The second part of ebXML makes up the majority of this text. Part II is designed for an audience of managers that will be responsible for implementing e-business solutions in their organizations. It makes sense that managers will need to understand the big picture overview (Part I) before embarking on making e-business implementation decisions.

Note that this book is not intended to be a technical developers text for implementing ebXML. It does not contain code examples. There is no assumption of technical prerequisites for reading this text.

Summary:

This book is divided into two major parts— the first part designed for executives and the second part designed for managers implementing e-business solutions. In Part I, the authors begin by explaining a bit about how the Internet has changed the business environment. The complexity of the business climate, the requirement to respond immediately, and the idea that information systems are taking on more importance as a business asset are all introduced here. The authors introduce the idea that e-business is much more that just buying and selling on the Web. They give the example of using the Internet to provide online inventory tracking capabilities. This is clearly an example of e-business. Yet goods were neither bought or sold.

Once the reader understands the impact of the Internet on business, the authors begin to highlight the features of information technology systems that will be able to make the shift and keep pace with modern business requirements. Here the authors highlight the shift from mainframes to client-server and finally to Web-based architectures. They also make the clear point that in the 1980's IT systems were internally focused and served a limited and well-defined set of corporate users. Today, IT systems are far broader, serving internal staff, customers, suppliers and business partners.

Next, the authors introduce executives to the problems of integrating such broad supply-chain web architectures. Here the the importance of using standards emerges, and the requirements and technology of ebXML is explained. Then the potential for ebXML is explained by showing examples of how this specification solves real business problems and gives rise to more e-business opportunities.

The second part of the book looks under the covers of ebXML. Since no assumptions are made about technical pre-requisites of the readers, XML is briefly explained, as is EDI. This part of the book provides a great historical insight, by authors who participated in the process of developing ebXML. It begins by describing how ebXML came to be and what happened along the way. We get a good feel for the scope and business requirements. ebXML is not with out competitor specifications. According to the authors, "a number of other initiatives have started to offer some of the same features as ebXML." In Chapter 7 the authors provide a discussion of some of these other initiatives such as XML/EDI, RosettaNet, Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI), Web Services and WSDL that are "especially relevant to the way ebXML content will be delivered and orchestrated." The book concludes with a detailed look at the ebXML architecture.

Recommendation:

This book provides a great introduction to ebXML. The book begins using simple business terms and reasoning. It lays out the case for ebXML and why, in their opinion, ebXML has such promise. On the cover, Klaus-Dieter Naukjok, Chair of ebXML claims that the book describes in "compelling terms" the ideas behind ebXML and how you can use them in your business. I think this quote says it all. The book is clearly written in compelling terms. In addition to providing insights into ebXML, it appears to me that the authors have a clear goal to "sell" ebXML and speed its adoption.

ebXML is an important title to add to your XML or e-business library. First, because it is the first book on this topic. Second, because it is written by knowledgeable authors who participated, first hand, in the birth of ebXML. And third, it provides a good synopsis of ebXML. Despite this recommendation, I do however caution readers that this book may not be the most objective in its evaluation of ebXML. While I agree with Karl Best of OASIS that the book "will aid in reaching decisions regarding the implementation of ebXML," I do not recommend that you use this book as your sole basis for reaching implementation decisions.

Dianne Kennedy, Editor XML Files

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