RE: update on Versatile B2B gateway

Title: update on Versatile B2B gateway

Hello Jacques,

 

This document was mentioned on the call yesterday, and I remembered 
I hadn't provided feedback to it yet.

 

First of all, I think it is a really good document, which I think should 
be posted, when final, on the ebXML.org site (I'll check with my 
colleagues).  There is a recently updated OASIS template for 
white papers you could use for it. 

http://docs.oasis-open.org/templates/ 

 

Some other comments:

Page 2, when a message is not a service 
invocation.

Implicit in the first bullet where you mention BPM, the 
message may be just a way to transport e.g. documents intended for human 
consumption.  There may be a mapping from ebMS header fields RefToMessageId 
and ConversationId to workflow processes or to route the document to the 
responsible employee.  There are actual projects using ebXML for this, e.g. 
in eGovernment to reduce paper-based processing.

 

Page 4 
and Figure 1 on page 5, these mention ebMSv3.  The current 
OASIS/ISO 15000-2 Standard offers many of the same benefits, and 
its security and reliability features (while further updated in some WS 
specifications) are quite stable and reliable.  It is good to 
mention the added features of ebMSv3, but I would suggest you talk 
about ebMS (without version number) in the general text. I am a bit 
concerned that people may interpret this as saying there is no (longer any) 
value in ebMS2 today, which isn't true and may upset some people that actually 
use it today.  This comment applies to other 
figures.

 

Perhaps this and 
other diagrams should also explicitly indicate that within the enterprise 
SOAP requests are just one way of connecting to backend systems (JMS, MQ, 
Tib/Rendezvous etc.). This is implicit in later references to integration 
brokers.

 

Page 
5, this suggests WS-Addressing is effectively a prerequisite to support this 
pattern, which seems too strong (it is useful, but couldn't the functionality 
described be achieved using more convential 
methods?).

 

As a 
more general comment, the document is mainly focussed on the connectivity and 
decoupling features of the B2B gateway. It does not discuss trading 
configuration, partner management, activity monitoring and business process 
(choreography) support.  But perhaps those deserve separate white papers 
...

 

I hope 
you find these comments useful.

 

Best 
regards,

 

Pim 
van der Eijk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since 
there will be quite some time until ebMS

I 
would suggest you mention In figure  

 

 

From: Jacques Durand 
[mailto:] 
Sent: 08 December 2005 
02:37
To: 'Monica J Martin'; Breininger, Kathryn R; Ian 
Jones
Cc: 'Pim van der Eijk'
Subject: update on Versatile 
B2B gateway

An update of the previous "Versatile B2B gateway" SOA design 
pattern draft, that was submitted to ebSOA TC. 
- The 
"synchronous WS request-response" case was added as one of the cases for Fig 
2. 
- Fig 3 was remodeled to show the document exchanges 
and its back-end binding to be appropriate in case of business 
processes.

Jacques