Re: Brief Guide to eCo

[Murray Maloney <murray@muzmo.com>]

Leslie is correct. If anyone understood me to be claiming
authorship of all of the material at the CommerceNet website,
I apologize. As I mentioned in the phone call that led to
this posting, I was the chair of the eCo Project, and I wanted
to help members of this WG become familiar with eCo.

Leslie deserves all the credit for publishing the eCo Spec
on the web and editing the introductory material -- some of
which I reproduced in my message to Brian, which was subsequently
forwarded to the WG.

Sorry for any confusion this may have caused.

At 02:18 PM 4/19/00 -0500, Leslie Lundquist wrote:
>Excuse me, there's a point that needs to be clarified here. Murray Maloney 
>did not create this material, although he was instrumental in developing 
>the eCo specification itself, which did include sample DTDs. The material 
>you mention below was developed by CommerceNet and the ATP Joint Venture 
>partners, including Commerce One, Cadabra.com (now part of goto.com) and 
>BizBots, after Murray was no longer involved in the project. In fact, I was 
>responsible for leading this work on behalf of CommerceNet to bring 
>together some introductory materials about eCo.
>
>Thanks,
>Leslie Lundquist
>
>At 12:45 PM 4/17/00 -0700, you wrote:
>>Brief Guide to eCo from Murray Maloney.
>>
>>The Web entry point for eCo is http://eco.commerce.net/
>>See http://eco.commerce.net/specs/index.cfm for an overview of eCo.
>>Please see http://eco.commerce.net/specs/index.cfm for interfaces,
>>XML DTDs, and sample instances.
>>
>>The eCo Architectural Specification describes an e-commerce system
>>in seven layers that can be accessed to answer such business and
>>systems questions as:
>>
>>         What other businesses can I find?
>>         What services do they offer?
>>         What kinds of interactions do they expect?
>>         What protocols do they follow?
>>         Can our systems communicate?
>>         What application interfaces do they provide?
>>         Are our interfaces compatible?
>>         What information must we exchange?
>>
>>The basic model is:
>>
>>                 Networks                        ]
>>contain         Markets         ]
>>where                           Businesses      ]
>>provide/use                             Services                ]
>>which conduct                           Interactions]
>>by exchanging                                   Documents
>>]
>>containing                                                      Information
>>Items   ]
>>
>>eCo specifies document types and interfaces that must be implemented
>>for each layer supported. The top three layers is all that is required
>>to register and interoperate in a networked marketplace. The Service
>>and Interaction layers can be used to publish eCo-compliant interfaces
>>to your services and interactions (like your 'Business Process' and 'Step').
>>The Document and Information Item layers (optional) are intended to be
>>used by Network and Market makers to establish/register the business
>>document and data element types that are used within a given network
>>or market.
>>
>>Let me know if this helps.
>
>****************
>Leslie Lundquist
>Vice President, Research Group
>CommerceNet
>408-446-1260 ext 225
>
>CommerceNet: Venturing with Partners Worldwide
>to Create Value through Innovation in Electronic Commerce.
>
>