Companies Prepare to Clean Up

The powerhouse combo of XML and HTTP is catching on quickly in the B2B world, and may indeed prove to be the "killer app" for XML, as some have opined (see Ken Sall's report from XML World 1999 for some interesting comments). A perusal of the WDVL's XML Specifications page gives a hint of the veritable alphabet soup of e-business-oriented XML standards (Try OTP, OFX, XFDL, CBL, WIDL, ICE, BizTalk, and cXML for starters). Whether this proliferation of standards is a good thing or not, it does provide evidence that companies are embracing XML as the centerpiece of B2Bi software.

WebMethods ( http://www.webmethods.com/) is one company that sells B2Bi software based on XML. Their "solutions" address the main areas of business-to-business integration, including procurement, supply-chain management, delivery tracking, and so forth. The idea is to "reduce human intervention in business processes," by setting up enterprise applications, EDI systems and databases to talk to each other, both within an enterprise and between the enterprise and its business partners.

Another interesting B2Bi software vendor is XMLSolutions ( http://www.xmls.com/). If nothing else, they've got a pretty dandy domain name. Like WebMethods, they offer software that helps organizations link up their business processes with suppliers, customers, industry trading exchanges, and other business associates. XMLSolutions prides itself on its methods for translating the various flavors of EDI into XML (and different flavors of XML into each other!), allowing diverse systems, including legacy EDI systems, to be integrated.

The B2Bi craze is part of a larger trend towards tying different kinds of computer networks together into a cohesive matrix through which all information is available anytime, anywhere. Whether the data is on a mainframe, an AS/400, a Unix server, or a stack of punched cards (just kidding), it should be accessible to PCs, thin clients, wireless PDAs and Dick Tracy watches anywhere in the world.

The extent to which this Holy Grail can be achieved will of course depend on the particular organizations involved, but the combination of XML and HTTP provides a framework that is flexible and extensible enough to handle just about any business integration project. Tying applications in different organizations together will often involve different platforms, so XML's platform-agnostic nature makes it the perfect tool.

However, XML alone can't solve all the problems of the world. XML's greatest strength can turn into a curse if not managed wisely. As we've discussed in an URLier article, XML schema provide a means to create your own tags and your own way of doing things. But if every clever developer out there simply writes new schema as needed, the result can be chaos. For situations in which different organizations need to access each others' applications on a regular, automated basis, some sort of set of conventions is a must. This is basically what SOAP is – an agreed-upon set of rules for creating XML/HTTP-based method requests.

BizTalk (http://biztalk.org/) is an industry group that was started by Microsoft, and now involves a variety of vendors that are involved with business-to- business integration software. The goal is to develop standards (like SOAP) for XML/HTTP-based data interchange. They've created the BizTalk Framework, a set of guidelines on creating schemas in XML. Microsoft's BizTalk Server is one of several new products that support the guidelines.

SOAP, the Simple Object Access Protocol
SOAP, the Simple Object Access Protocol
Why is SOAP Causing Such a Lather?