Open Applications Group adoption of ebXML
ABSTRACT
This is a presentation of the Open Applications Group, Inc., www.openapplications.org, a non-profit industry consortium comprised of many of the most prominent stakeholders in the business software interoperability industry throughout the world.
Table of Contents
1. ebXML and the Open Applications Group
The Open Applications Group, Inc., www.openapplications.org, is a non-profit industry consortium comprised of many of the most prominent stakeholders in the business software interoperability industry throughout the world. It was formed in February of 1995 as a nonprofit consortium of leading enterprise application software developers, making it one of the earliest post-EDI organizations. Since that time, the organization has embraced customers, systems integrators, and integration enabling software vendors to work with the application software vendors to ensure that all of the stakeholders that are required to achieve it's goals are welcome and part of the solution.
The mission of the Open Applications Group is to promote the easy and cost-effective integration of business application software for Business to Business, Application to Application, and Application to Execution needs. An example of Application to Execution integration is logistics execution software to an ERP application.
The primary deliverables of the Open Applications Group are Business Scenario Diagrams, business messages called Business Object Documents (BODs), a data dictionary, XML DTD's, XDR, and sample instances with real data for each schema. All of this work is expressed in UML using Collaboration diagrams, Sequence Diagrams, Class Diagrams, and all messages are fully documented and modeled using the Booch methodology for modeling XML messages. The Open Applications Group was one of the first major organization to adopt XML to express the messages it built, adopting it in 1997 and first shipping XML based DTD's in February, 1998, just a few days after the W3C formally approved XML as a recommendation.
The technical strategy of the Open Applications Group is to focus on the content of the Business Scenarios, the messages, and the dictionary, and to be technology sensitive to specific technical frameworks, but not technology specific. As a result of this strategy of technical neutrality, the Open Applications Group consciously decided not to build technical frameworks and other mechanisms that define how the business scenarios it builds are enabled and how the Business Object documents are transported. This gives the user the freedom to adopt the specific infrastructure that makes sense for their specific business use.
This strategy also perfectly positions the Open Applications work to be used with the ebXML technical work currently under development. The Open Applications Group plans to use the ebXML Transport work, the ebXML Business Process Collaboration Schema, and the ebXML Collaboration Partner Protocol (CPP) as the Collaboration Partner Agreement (CPA) specifications. The group plans to define or populate these bodies of work with their content definitions as soon as these documents are completed. The Open Applications Group is also working and watching the Registry and Repository work as well and watching and contributing to the Core Components work and will work for convergence with these bodies of work as it makes sense to their constituency.
Members of the Open Applications Group include: Atofina, Candle, Compaq, Compuware, I2, IBM, Intel, Wonderware, irista, J.D. Edwards, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, NEC, Oracle, PeopleSoft, PricewaterhouseCoopers, PSDI, Software AG, Active Software, Agile Software, CIMLINC, eXcelon, Future Three, Great Plains, Mercator, Optio Software, SeeBeyond, Silverstream, SoftQuad, StreamServe, SynQuest, Teklogix, Viewlocity, IMI, AT&T, Boeing, DHL, Ford, Lucent, Unilever, Bluestone, Canopy, Cyclone Commerce, Digital Paper, Electron Economy, EntComm, ePropose, Extricity, Frictionless Commerce, GloTech, HMS, iBASEt, Idapta, Killdara, Mega, Net Commerce, Netfish, Netonomy, NexPrise, NextSet Software, ObjectSpace, OnDisplay, PaperExchange.com, Requisite Technology, Robocom Systems, Sand Hill Systems, Ariba, Symbolic Systems, Tilion, TradeAccess, Vesta Technologies, webMethods, XML Global Technology, XMLSolutions, Intercim, and Quadrem.