Karen,
Not exactly. I think you're close but not quite there. It's not the
variation in internal systems file structures that cause the challenge, it's
the semantic definition of every piece of business information being
exchanged. This is what has to be aligned between business partners. Once
this has been achieved, establishing file/field/database field associations
is a walk in the park!
Rachel
-----Original Message-----
From: littlesys [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2001 7:40 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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