How EDI fits into a Web Services world Presented by Krishna Prasad GM (Technology), HCL EAI Services (Formerly Aalayance )

How EDI fits into a Web Services world Presented by Krishna Prasad

GM (Technology), HCL EAI Services (Formerly

Aalayance )

Agenda

• Business Integration Technology

• EDI

• Competing technologies

• Emerging Web Services technologies that coexist with EDI

• Conclusion

Business Integration Technology

• Definition: • BI = Business to business communication

(B2B) + Enterprise application integration (EAI).

• Example:• In a typical supply chain, plant and supplier

need to collaborate and ERP system of each partner has to be updated with this collaborations.

Business Integration (BI) Technology

• Necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for success of BI technology:– Partner acceptance of the Business

Integration standard– Vendor consensus on implementing

standards– Simplicity

Business Integration (BI) Technology

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)

• Used for Business to Business communication• Dominant in supply chain management• Established Standards in EDI:

– ANSI X12 (USA)– EDIFact (Europe) – HIPAA (Healthcare)

• Document standards – at least 250+– E.g., PO (850), ASN (856)

• Transport standards– E.g., VAN, AS2

• Trading partner agreement framework

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)

Example implementation – EDI in Publication Industry

Retail Shop

Community Libraries

Schools/Colleges

Enterprise SystemFTP/

HTTP

GIS Process modeler

Gentran 6.xFor Mapping

Gentran Integration

to Enterprise

System

Worldwide EDI market revenue

• EDI is – Arcane: Age old Cobol-like data structures– Costly:

• Used to require Value added Network (VAN)• High development and support costs

– Error-prone: Needs manual data collection and data entry

What’s wrong with EDI?

• Locked up investment in EDI

• Backing by big guys:– WalMart, Novartis and Addison Wesley– Big guys drive partners to adopt it as well

• Support from powerful vendors:– GE, Sterling Commerce

• Critical mass of usage resulting in Return on Investment (ROI) for the big guys.

Why EDI will stay anyway?

• AS2 (EDI over HTTP) reduced cost by eliminating VAN. Walmart drove adoption of AS2.

• No real solution is in sight given the wide variations in processes, vocabularies and practices around the world.

Why EDI will stay anyway?

Competing Technologies- RosettaNet- ebXML

• RosettaNet standard is widely accepted in electronics industry by leaders like Intel, Dell, National Semiconductors.

• Standardizes business processes in the form of PIPs and RNIF.

• They were the first to standardize on XML as a standard payload.

• RosettaNet is backed by vendors like Adobe, Inovis, National Semiconductors and Dell.

• Will continue as a niche player

RosettaNet

Typical RosettaNet implementation

Source: WebLlogic

• ebXML can be broken down into modules like,– ebMS (Messaging services)– ebBPSS (Business process Definitions)– ebCPPA (Collaborative protocol for Partner Agreement)

• ebXML is trying to solve too many challenges. It is a complex set of standards.

• We haven’t come across any real implementation of ebXML

• ebMS diverges from Web Services standards

• ebBPSS is in competition with BPEL that has much better momentum.

• In terms of vendor backing, it is only backed by standard committee like Oasis. It is not backed by any big vendors (IBM/Oracle/SAP).

• ebXML is not where the money is

ebXML

Emerging Web Services technologies

(that coexist with EDI)

• Radio Frequency Identifier (RFID) and Electronic Product Code Information System (EPCIS) standards emerging around Web Services for product tracking in the supply chain space.

• Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) for process execution

• Enterprise Service Architecture (ESA) for hooking up SAP into BPEL’s process execution

• Frameworks like Web Services Invocation Framework (WSIF)

Emerging Web Services technologies

• EPCGlobalInc.org: Consortium evolving a EPCGlobal Network standard.

• What is EPCGlobal Network?– A global network (web) of information about product

items– Consists of:

• Electronic Product code (EPC)• EPC Middleware (ALE)• Discovery Services• EPCIS

RFID Revolution: ALE and EPCIS

RFID Technology building blocks

Source: Cambridge Auto-ID Labs

Web Services protocol

Web Services protocol

• EDI Pushes data. This means:– We can’t get data on-demand. E.g., Balance on

Hand (BoH) cannot be dynamically obtained.– We can’t pull missing data. E.g., Missing Item master

record cannot be pulled.

• EPCIS complements EDI to provide pull capabilities.

• RFID reduces errors by replacing manual data collection and data entry.

• EPCIS communicates with each other using cost effective Web Services standards

RFID/EPCIS - Impact on EDI

Use case - Associating an unexpected shipment to a purchase order.

The retailer’s EPCIS query’s the EPCglobalDiscovery Services to locate themanufacturer’s EPCIS.

Orphan Item came in shipment to retailer

The ONS sends the retailer’s EPCIS the location of the manufacture’s EPCIS.

Manufacturer

authenticates the

requester

Manufacturer

authenticates the

requester

Stop

Manufacturer gets the Serial number and identifies which PO the item belongs to

Sends PO information to requestor’s EPCIS system. Which locates the PO and fulfils it.

StopStop

No

Yes

Use case - On-demand inventory count with help from EPCIS stores of retailers and warehouses

EPCIS query on EPCglobal Network for inventory levels in retailer DCs and stores. The Web appl. shows list of participating retailers, Walmart, Sam’s Club, etc. User selects Walmart

Manufacturer request a BoH thru’ a web screen

Software uses EPCglobalNetwork to find Wal*MartStores’ EPCIS and retrieve BoH for selected product

BPEL

• EDI vendors did not use a well designed custom business process modeling tools.

• BPEL brings the benefits of standardization.– Rich process model including parallel execution (flow), event

handling and alarms– Compensatory mechanisms for handling failures in long running

transactions– Have WSDL? BPEL can use it. Web Services of course! Legacy

apps connected by WSIF via JCA/JDBC.

• What it doesn’t do, – No user interaction. Semi automated process cannot be

modeled.– No in-built support for transformation

BPEL Architecture: Typical One Request, One of Two Possible Responses

Source: Oracle

Request could be to order a product online, and the Firstresponse could be either an in stock message, or an out of stock message.

ESA

• SAP’s initiative to standardize how enterprise applications provide Web Services interfaces.

• An Enterprise Service is a Web Services whose interfaces fit into a “pattern” with Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete, Query and Action operations named and defined according to a convention.

• Tools can take advantage of the conventions to discover and integrate compliant enterprise services.

• All SAP products to provide ESA compliant Web Services interfaces by 2007

• Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, EMC, Intel and Macromedia have licensed ESA from SAP.

What is WSIF, how it rescues BPEL?

• Framework from Apache that lets you access back-end systems, while providing a WSDL interface to BPEL.

• Use case:

– A prescription drug supplier had existing HTTP GET interfaces in front of mainframe batch processes.

– A custom WSIF binding to support HTTP GET requests was built.

– The WSDL interface to this HTTP "Web Services" means that standard BPEL processes can interact with the mainframe applications without requiring support for a new interface.

Conclusion

Conclusion

• EDI will continue as the backbone of BI.

• RosettaNet will be a niche player.

• ebXML isn’t succeeding in the market place.

• All new developments will revolve around Web Services.

• EPCIS complements static/push/batch EDI with dynamic capabilities and reduces errors.

• BPEL standardizes business process execution.

• ESA standardizes Web Services interfaces to legacy applications.

• Frameworks like WSIF is emerging to integrate BPEL with legacy systems.

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