I appreciate Sally's comments.
As long as we're going to talk "reality" (or ignorance of it), I assume that
the types of business communications directly affecting supply-chain are in
the procurement & materials management realm. How do I discern what XML is
used for implementation in this realm?
(From my personal experience, if there were a sole component supplier in the
supply-chain of a big company, I suspect the big company would subsidize
whatever the implementation to protect their supply. I may be wrong here,
though.)
Anyway, I'd like to know if there's any ERP or MRP systems commercially
available currently with the XML features Sally describes.
What are the real implementation issues associated with trading partner
deployment in these systems? Are they similar or different from those of
EDI?
I'm looking for responses that delineate the activities and durations
involved.
THANKS!
-Karen
----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2001 8:20 AM
Subject: RE: The XML/EDI has no Clothes!
> Well, you all have good points, but let me present an alternate view. The
> big guys are all doing EDI now, and they are unlikely to change. However,
> they are still missing a large piece of the supply chain. The further down
> the supply chain you go, the less likely the companies at that level are
to
> be doing business entirely in one vertical chain, and the less likely they
> are to be doing EDI at all. If a company isn't doing a large percentage of
> business with a big guy, it's not going to spend the money to install EDI
> because it doesn't care if it keeps that customer or not. It may, however,
> be the sole supplier of some essential component. If we can guess that Mr.
> Pareto's theory applies, about 80% of suppliers are not doing EDI at the
> moment. It takes much longer to cascade requirements down the supply chain
> when they don't do EDI, and at the bottom of the chain, the suppliers may
be
> working with month-old data. Do you see the problem here?
>
> With XML, the big guys can create the same old EDI files they always have,
> and they can be readily transformed into XML, which in turn can be, with a
> style sheet, either formatted to a web form, applied to a spread-sheet, or
> sent directly into an off-the-shelf MRP or ERP system. I feel confident
that
> there will soon be a myriad of very inexpensive tools available to do
those
> things, provided we don't get into the same mess we did when we started
with
> EDI. That's why the work of ebXML's Core Components and Business Process
> groups is so important. There is an opportunity, now, to get control of
XML
> in a way that those of us who were early X12 participants never even
> considered in the EDI world.
>
> Just my two cents,
>
> Sally Fuger
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: littlesys [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2001 8:40 AM
> To: David RR Webber; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: The XML/EDI has no Clothes!
>
>
> I usually follow these discussions in the background, but I'm compelled to
> comment here. Although the registry is definately a part of addressing
the
> deficiencies in understanding the semantics, the real meat of the problem
is
> in making the "mappings" available to eliminate that cost.
>
> This would mean that you have to know what the backend applications file
> structures are, and from my somewhat limited understanding, the standards
> folks don't have that body of knowledge in its entirety. Who does? The
> application developers. But where are they blind? They don't know what
> variations the trading partners are sending.
>
> Consequently, each company implementing finds itself mapping or buying
maps
> or hiring mappers in order to achieve all the great stuff EDI and XML
> delivers.
>
> So, I guess I'm just reinforcing Steve's observations.
>
> Kindest regards,
> Karen Raper
> Little Sys, Inc.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David RR Webber" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2001 11:29 PM
> Subject: Re: The XML/EDI has no Clothes!
>
>
> Steve,
>
> It is frightening that 3 years on people are still none the
> wiser than when we started! But why should that surprise me!!
>
> Anyway - XML-EDI is simply that - this approach was taken
> by CommerceNet in the first scramble to jump on the XML
> bandwagon. Take an EDI transaction and 'convert' it to
> XML by replacing the segment ids and field separators
> with <tags> instead. You may shuffle the fields around
> abit, create some new parent structures, and add additional
> fields, but essentially its EDI in an XML wrapper.
>
> The BizTalk mapper takes this one step further by
> auto-generating the tags simply off the segment name
> and field sequence number.
>
> XML/edi on the other hand requires that you first of
> all create a Registry. Then each element within a
> transaction is allocated a Bizcode (aka UID in ebXML
> parlance, GRef in RosettaNet). Then each element is
> assigned semantic metadata information and business
> information within the Registry that can be referenced
> by the application software automatically querying the
> XML structures in the registry that hold the semantics.
>
> Then the last piece is the use of XML scripts (templates)
> to define the mappings required and essentially
> carry the integration linkage for the particular combination
> of business process and application software. This makes
> these re-usable (notice in the EDI world this is the expensive
> internal proprietary mappings that EDI tool vendors sell you).
>
> RosettaNet has created a Registry - but stopped short
> of referencing it during the content processing.
>
> Now you can begin to see why the early money went on the
> quick and dirty fix-it - because noone wanted to implement
> the registry and scriptable mapping technologies first.
>
> The ebXML work is now crossing this milestone with
> registry specifications.
>
> Thanks, DW.
> =================================================
> Message text written by "Steve L. Bollinger"
> >
> Most of us were not here three years ago. Please state again the
> difference between XML-EDI and XML/edi. The web page does not clearly
> state that nor does your email.
>
> David I don't think that distinction will matter at all to the major point
> I raise because regardless of this you still need to integrate the
received
>
> document into the back-end data base of the receiving partner. It is this
> point of semantic translation that is the problem in XML-EDI or XML/edi
(or
>
> X12, etc.).
>
> At 11:18 AM 1/31/2001 -0500, David RR Webber wrote:
> >I'm sorry that CISCO has poured millions into the hole
> >finding this out - but I am not in the least bit surprised.
>
> I expect by this you would also have to apply this same comment to
> RosettaNet who continues to form these standards? Is this not also
XML-EDI
>
> and bound to fail?
> <
>
>
>
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