RE: Roy's ApacheCon presentation

There's also the UBL effort that is attempting to provide a foundation on
which a lot of vertical industries can build XML document based interfaces
by defining:
1. A set of re-usable "core components" will fully defined semantics and an
XML representation, e.g. for names, addresses, etc. - there's about 500
defined so far
2. A set of "base" (my term) documents that use the core components to
create XML Schema for commonly used business documents, e.g. orders,
invoices etc. These are generic in that they have been designed to work
independently of the (business) context in which they are being used, e.g.
industry, locale, process, etc. They also have fully defined semantics.
3. An extension methodology that defines how you can extend and/or on the
base document definitions to meet the needs of specific contexts, e.g. for
the auto, chemical, insurance industries, etc.

This way you can have a document instance where anyone can read the elements
from the "base" document if you need just them and either use (or ignore)
the additional elements added using the extension methodology depending on
your need.

A good recent overview of UBL is available at ...
http://www.sdforum.org/p/docs/events/902/wsSIG10.22.02UniversalBusinessLangu
age.pdf
... and the working group at OASIS is at
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/

David

-----Original Message-----
From: Anne Thomas Manes [mailto:anne@manes.net]
Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 9:02 AM
To: Mark Baker
Cc: www-ws-arch@w3.org
Subject: RE: Roy's ApacheCon presentation



Insurance is only one example. Similar efforts are underway in banking, law,
tax filing, accounting, automotive retail, automotive manufacturing,
semiconductor manufacturing, etc., etc.

The key feature of Web services that you seem to be ignoring is that you can
develop reusable interfaces. And there's a strong incentive among the
industry groups to design these reusable interfaces.

Anne

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-ws-arch-request@w3.org [mailto:www-ws-arch-request@w3.org]On
> Behalf Of Mark Baker
> Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 9:32 AM
> To: Anne Thomas Manes
> Cc: www-ws-arch@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Roy's ApacheCon presentation
>
>
>
> Hi Anne,
>
> On Wed, Nov 20, 2002 at 08:54:48AM -0500, Anne Thomas Manes wrote:
> > That's not O(N^2) complexity.
>
> It's not O(N^2) as long as you're only integrating insurance systems
> with one another using the same WSDL.  As soon as you step outside of
> insurance, such as if you wanted to integrate banking, CRM, etc.. it's
> O(N^2) because each new system added (that doesn't have an interface
> that you've already integrated to), requires new integration work.
>
> If you don't buy that argument, would you agree that having less
> interfaces means easier integration?  i.e. that it's easier if all the
> insurance companies agree on a standard interface than it would be if
> they didn't?  If so, would you also agree that if banking and CRM
> companies could agree to wrap themselves in the same interface, that
> this would further reduce integration costs?  And if yes to that, then
> wouldn't the ultimate interface be one that could wrap all systems?
>
> MB
> --
> Mark Baker.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.   http://www.markbaker.ca
>
>    Will distribute objects for food
>

Received on Wednesday, 20 November 2002 14:46:42 UTC