Developing Collaborative Applications for the Peer Web using Adaptive XML Jeffrey Kay [email protected] Chief Technology Officer, Engenia Software Inc.

Developing Collaborative Applications for the Peer Web using Adaptive XML

Jeffrey Kay <[email protected]>Chief Technology Officer, Engenia Software Inc.

2

Collaborative services can enrich business-to-business relationships by boosting site stickiness, facilitating transactions, creating communications channels, disseminating information, and improving problem solving.

Collaborative services can enrich business-to-business relationships by boosting site stickiness, facilitating transactions, creating communications channels, disseminating information, and improving problem solving.

B2B Collaboration. Business-to-business (B2B) relationships can be enriched by various collaboration tools. While currently a nascent market, collaborative services will quickly be embedded in diverse B2B areas such as Net markets, partner relationship management tools, and portals.

B2B Collaboration. Business-to-business (B2B) relationships can be enriched by various collaboration tools. While currently a nascent market, collaborative services will quickly be embedded in diverse B2B areas such as Net markets, partner relationship management tools, and portals.

““Companies should build Companies should build collaborative services collaborative services around B2B activities.”around B2B activities.”

Matt Cain, MetaGroupMatt Cain, MetaGroup

““Companies should build Companies should build collaborative services collaborative services around B2B activities.”around B2B activities.”

Matt Cain, MetaGroupMatt Cain, MetaGroup

B2B services will first use collaboration as a market differentiator, but by 2004 rich collaboration services will be a given for most B2B activities.

B2B services will first use collaboration as a market differentiator, but by 2004 rich collaboration services will be a given for most B2B activities.

B2B CollaborationBuilding Strong Relationships

3

Collaboration

• Collaboration is about people, processes and projects• Collaboration systems must be able to adapt to change• People require proactive, event-driven, contextual, and

adaptable information to avoid information overload• Processes and projects need meaningful and useful

information that can be automatically processed in an appropriate fashion

• Enterprises and people must be able to directly and easily connect to each other with minimal integration

• Distributed processes must be able to span between enterprises, creating virtual workflows

4

B2B Collaboration Is Transitioning From Centralized

To Distributed

Enterprise

Enterprise

Enterprise

Enterprise

Enterprise

Enterprise

CentralExchange

Enterprise

Enterprise

EnterpriseEnterprise

Enterprise

Enterprise

5

B2B and Peer Technology

“By using the Internet to bundle products with related information and services, creative companies can improve their effectiveness and efficiency of their clients’ businesses. By doing so, the will be able to forge strong, long-lasting client relationships that will de-emphasize product price and exchange-based transactions.”

– Harvard Business Review, Beyond the Exchange, November-December 2000

Peer technology enables enterprises to forge the strong, long lasting relationships needed to

succeed in today’s market

6

peer \pir\ n.

1 : one that is of equal standing with another : EQUAL; esp : one belonging to the same societal group esp. based on age, grade or status

7

A Definition of P2P

P2P means many things

– Content distribution networks between individuals– Cycle sharing systems for computationally intense tasks– File sharing between devices– Collaboration systems– Instant messaging

A clear definition is key to success implementation of peer technology in an enterprise

8

Router

Internet

Router

RouterModem

Modem

Modem

Modem

Node

Node

Server

Server

Node

PDA

Comm. Tower

Node

p2p \pir too pir\ n. a virtual network of functionally similar nodes created using an alternate, often private, namespace

9

p2p n. a virtual network of functionally similar nodes created using an alternate,

often private, namespace

Important concepts– Connectivity is implied in the definition– Intermediaries don’t imply lack of

purity– Functionally similar doesn’t mean

exactly equal– Alternate namespaces step outside the

realm of DNS– Namespaces could be user or system

generated

10

The Significance of P2P

Services at the “edge of the network” that …– Increase user autonomy and empowerment– Enable the easy distribution of new services– Enhance relationships between enterprises

and between individuals by reducing the reliance on centralized exchanges and e-hubs

… and improve the overall power and scalability of the Web

11

Focus of Peer Web Technology

• Discovery– Provide named access to edge services– Locate and services that do not have a fixed IP address

• Connectivity– Transfer information between edge nodes without

interruption by intermediaries (firewalls)– Standard message formats for common service access

• Security– Identify trusted peers and users– Ensure non-repudiation of transactions– Maintain privacy of transactions

12

Not the Focus

• Illegal distribution of content– Napster and Gnutella educated the market about peer

technology but generally do not represent it

• Circumvention of IT – Empowerment does not have to be about “hopping

firewalls”– Enterprises need to be educated and evaluate the

applicability of peer technology

• Arbitrarily Creating Standards– Much of today’s web technology is applicable to the

peer web– Some additions enhance the ability for edge nodes to

interconnect

13

B2B CollaborationBuilding Strong Relationships

LargeEnterprise

Small Enterprise SmallEnterprise

Largest partner initiatespartnerships

Node

Small Enterprise

Relationships throughsingle partner's node

14

B2B CollaborationBuilding Strong Relationships

Stronger relationshipsbetween enterprises

New partner nodes toexpand capabilities at

each site

Node

Node

Node

LargeEnterprise

Small Enterprise

Node

Small Enterprise Small Enterprise

15

B2B CollaborationBuilding Strong Relationships

Node

Node

Node

Large Enterprise

Small EnterpriseMid Market Enterprise

Small Enterprise

Node

Node

Large Enterprise

New partner

More relationshipsbetween enterprises

Growth from small tomid-market enterprise

Growth from small tolarge enterprise

16

B2B and Peer Technology

• Today’s open standards provide solid components for creating peer based B2B collaboration systems–XML applied as an information interchange vehicle

–Scripts joined with XML to create portable business logic

–Complex, adaptive system structure to create independent, cooperative, collaborative applications that sharing of data and business rules

17

Applying Peer Technology to the Web

• Discovery– Identify new entities in

the web• Connectivity

– Easily network in new enterprises and partners

• Adaptability– Adjust automatically to

new entity types, additional nodes

• Scalability– Distribute the processing

among the partners to reduce central server burden

18

Implementation Approach

• Distributed Web Services– HTTP and XML as basic plumbing

• Relationship Model– Long-lived links between entities in the

system

• Adaptive application development model– The system grows dynamically as the number

of participants increases– New elements can be introduced without

requiring changes to the existing ones

19

Adaptive XML

• Supplants the traditional "business logic in a box" mentality and moves towards a more common environment where the business logic can be directly part of the data it is expected to manipulate

• Unique characteristic of being a dynamic entity, not a static data construct

• Combines the ability of XML information interchange with scripted behaviors to enable intelligence and collaboration

• An important approach to developing collaborative systems because entities can have the opportunity to adapt to their environment by changing their own properties or evolving new, more complex behaviors

20

Adaptive XML

• Representational entities describe business constructs and their corresponding behaviors– People– Activities– Processes and process steps– External events

• Functional entities provide services to other functional and representational entities– Search services– Connectivity services

21

Adaptive XML Application Model

Person

Activity

Activity

Activity

Person

Enterprise

Group

Event

EventIncludes

IncludesIncludes

Owns

Manages

Manages

Activity

Follows

OwnsFollowsManages

Owns

Owns

Owns

Implements

Implements

Manages

Group

Includes

Includes

Watches

EnterpriseIncludes

IncludesOwns

22

Characteristics of Adaptive XML

• Environmental awareness

• Autonomy• Reactivity• State

23

Environmental Awareness

• Relationships define nearby entities– Context is asserted by relating multiple

Adaptive XML streams to each other– Bidirectionality of relationships with

verbs provides context and semantics

• Event handlers accept environmental notifications

24

Autonomy

• Autonomous and scheduled operations–Allows systems to begin to work for users

–Moves systems from user-demand-driven to more autonomous operation

–Entities can change based on non-user events – changes in the weather, fluctuations of the stock market, news events

–User moves from demanding content to examining a snapshot of the state of a model

25

State

• Adaptive XML is not static–It is intended to be changed based on the business rules contained within its set of defined behaviors

–Changes to the XML reflect its current state–Behaviors with the XML can be defined to operate in context of the current state

• Adaptive XML will naturally change state as it is used to implement collaborative applications–Tasks can record completion–New information can be related and added to the system

–Events can be triggered based on changes

26

Reactivity

• Reactivity is the ability to respond to changes and to adapt accordingly

• Today’s XML schemas are not intelligent at all – most target basic information interchange

• Adaptive XML begins to add intelligent behavior to information – the XML can change to react to the world around it–New properties added as needed without schema redefinition

–Recalculations based on characteristics of neighbors (e.g. computing the state of a project based on the total collection of task end dates and statuses)

27

Skeleton Adaptive XML<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><?engenia.com version="1.0"?><e:OBJECT xmlns:e="urn:engenia.com" guid="xo_f709d140ffff83fc11d49f35d57af8f8ebc3"> <e:TITLE>Allen Abbeydale</e:TITLE> <e:DESCRIPTION>Analyst</e:DESCRIPTION> <e:TYPE VERSION="3.5">_bc_person</e:TYPE> <e:SCRIPT LANGUAGE="javascript"><![CDATA[function onPropertyChanged(prop,oldvalue,newvalue) { if (prop.toLowerCase() == "title") return false; // cannot change title here return true;}]]></e:SCRIPT> <e:ATTRIBUTES> <LASTOBJECTUPDATE>977328294910.000000</LASTOBJECTUPDATE> </e:ATTRIBUTES> <e:PROPERTIES STRUCTURED="true"> <PASSWORD PRIVATE="false">swaprods</PASSWORD> </e:PROPERTIES> <e:RELATIONSHIPS> <XO_3E8ACE60FFFF850211D49F35D57AF8F8EBC3 OBJTYPE="_bc_group"> <VERB>MANAGES</VERB> </XO_3E8ACE60FFFF850211D49F35D57AF8F8EBC3> </e:RELATIONSHIPS> <e:PUBLISH/> <e:SECURITY-POLICY> <ALLOW TYPE="RWD"> <XO_97485F40FFFF837211D49F35D57AF8F8EBC3>READWRITEDELETEACCESS</XO_97485F40FFFF837211D49F35D57AF8F8EBC3> </ALLOW> </e:SECURITY-POLICY></e:OBJECT>

28

XML Architecture

XML accessible information store

Adaptive XML --Collaboration Application Development

XM

L-b

ase R

PC

--se

rvice a

ccess

XML transforms intostandard schemas

XML query --search

XM

L/X

SL

T --

pu

blish

ing

WebDAV --unstructured data input

29

Node Architecture

Web Browser

Adaptive XMLEngine

HTTP

SOAPWebDAV

Adaptive XMLEngine

HTTP

SOAPWebDAV

Document-BasedApplications

Other Systems

SOAP

Adaptive XML

30

Applications for B2B Collaboration

• Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR)

• Supply Chain Logistics Collaboration• eXtended Relationship Management

(XRM)– Partner management– Client management– Vendor management

31

The Business Internet

• Adaptive XML helps companies fulfill the promise of the Business Internet with adaptive collaborative systems– Much more complex systems can evolve over

time– More enterprises can participate more easily in

systems that are designed to adapt to change– Systems can adopt new enhancements and

still participate in existing workflows and processes

– B2B collaboration begins to scale as systems decentralize

32

Peer Technology is the Centerpiece of B2B

Collaboration

Successful B2B is all about relationships and peer technology makes it happen

– Capabilities of B2B collaborative systems come together to help enterprises form tight relationships

– Enterprises provide more value to each other by developing long lasting relationships and working cooperatively

– Long lasting relationships are established through peering rather than through centralized exchanges

33

Pointers

• XMLP – www.w3.org W3C’s efforts to fully standardize SOAP

• P2PWG – www.p2pwg.org

Working Group for Peer to Peer technology

• Decentralization – www.yahoogroups.com Where the P2P geeks go

Jeffrey Kay <[email protected]>

Engenia Software Inc.

www.engenia.com