Atlanta April 25 Jim Greeney, application integration manager for the e-commerce company TIE spoke yesterday at the 2001 Oracle Applications User Group Conference. Greeney presented to an e-commerce/EDI (electronic data interchange) special interest group, and discussed ebXML (electronic business Extensible Markup Language) specifications and integration with Oracle applications.
The development of ebXML specifications is a joint initiative of the United Nations (UN/CEFACT) and OASIS, developed with global participation for global usage. ebXML is a set of open, global specifications that will facilitate international e-commerce using XML. The goal of ebXML is to create a single global electronic marketplace, where enterprises of any size and geographic location can meet and conduct business through the exchange of XML-based messages. "ebXML will enable anyone, anywhere, to do business with anyone. It will be the equivalent of looking in a phone book and not only finding the number of a potential supplier, but also a translation dictionary that you use to talk to them, no matter where they are or what language they speak," Greeney said. Membership in ebXML is open to anyone and the initiative enjoys broad industry support, with over 75 member companies, including Sun, IBM and TIE.
Once partnerships are established, the integration of messages with back-end systems is critical to successfully providing goods and services to customers. These messages must be translated to a format that each system can understand and utilize. TIE successfully completed integration to and from Oracle applications as part of the ebXML Proof of Concept Demonstration.
Using the TIE Integrator, developers extracted an "Item Exchange List" from Oracle applications; posted a "Purchase Order" to the Oracle applications Open Interface Table; transformed the XML-formatted "Item Exchange List" to ebXML, and the inbound "Purchase Order" from ebXML to XML; and created the related acknowledgements needed to complete the transactions.
