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Business-to-Business Integration
Business Partners can implement applications that provide computer-to-computer
communication software interface.
Figure 4; shows how the customer's purchasing system can be integrated
with the supplier's Order Entry system. These documents formats are
in XML format. The Data Transformation process is included to convert
the incoming XML document to the format compatible with the Order
Entry software and vice versa.
Figure 4: Computer-to-computer communication
Software can be implemented as component objects. Objects are pieces
of code that perform certain tasks. Business processes can be implemented
as objects, which can be shared by many applications. Objects usually
have properties and methods. A property is some attribute of an object
that you can interrogate or set to some value. For example you can
access the status of an order by accessing the properties of the purchase
order object. A method is a function that an object performs when
invoked. A method can be AddNewOrder or GetStockPrice.
The customer's purchasing system can access these methods through
a software interface call Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). This
makes use of existing Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) for sending
this information. For example, whenever there is a purchase order
for the supplier, the customer's application will set up an AddNewOrder
method SOAP session to send the purchase order to the supplier. Upon
receiving the new order, the data will be transformed and sent into
the supplier order processing software. A acknowledge response will
be generated and this document is sent back to the customer's system
using the same method.
To get stock price, for example, the GetStockPrice method connects
to a database containing current stock information. The process of
obtaining the appropriate result is hidden from the computer or application
that is requesting for the result. Some method needs additional parameter,
for example GetStockPrice method can get the price of a particular
part number when the part number parameter is provided. This set of
methods of object forms the company's web services.
Who should define the methods and properties? The easiest way is to
get your business partners together to define this set API. The standard
committees that are currently working on this aspect of the processes
integration are RosettaNet?[6] and ebXML?[7].
The other important standard is UDDI, Universal Description, Discovery
and Integration. UDDI is a business registry, synonymous to telephone
yellow pages.
Web Services make up a set of standards, one of which is the object
access protocol, SOAP. This standard defines the data structure to
describe the web service interfaces.
The other components of Web Services are a set of API (application
programming interface). The Web Service API is described using a language
syntax called Web Services Description Language (WSDL). This language
is used to define the methods and parameters of the component objects
of the Web Service.
The standard to publish and maintain the registry is also defined.
UDDI, will provide the basic infrastructure for company to publish
their web services and enable other companies to find business partners.
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