AW: What do people really expect from ebXML? - the Vision \\\"thing\\\"

["andreas.schultz" <andreas.schultz@cityweb.de>]

David,

thank you for your comment. Be sure, I\'m not living in the past, but - and I\'m not saying you are intending this - living today with the view to the future should not mean, to forget what was in the past. If you don\'t base the future on the past, you base it on nothing. What do I mean by this:

Yes we do need some new transactions for a completly new world. But in this \"brave new world\" we will have a co-existance of \"old\" ways of doing business and new ones. Of course you can say, ebXML, CC and the new transactions are only for this new ways of business. But is this true? Partly yes, some of this new transactions will be created for pda, wap, m-business and what will come up in the future. But beside this we will still have B2B transactions which contain not only one \"message\" but a lot of messages within one transaction. For this we have of course the \"old\" EDI messages. But, for this companies it makes no sense to have total different systems. This means, the basis for traditional messages and this \"new\" messages should be the same. That\'s for me and I guess for a lot of the CC members what can come out of this work we have done now for nearly 18  month. The other thing is the idea behind UN/EDIFACT. To have standardised messages for a global use, so !
that someone in Timbuktu can send a message to Bremen or Los Angeles or Taipeh and it will work the same way all the time, maybe with different subsets of the one UNSM. To have global accepted messages, needs to have a neutral global organisation like the UN/CEFACT EWG where business people of different domains coming together and work on that. With this people can go to one place to find descriptions of these messages and do not have to go to one software vendor who always find a way to change standards in more or less slight way to be different from other vendors to bind the customers to their own products.

David, you have said \"EDI now, therefore
> does no more than it did in the good old days of 2400 baud\" that is true but is it bad? It makes transactions much faster ;-). But to be serious, it is realy true, but on the other hand, as I know from people from the banking sector, it seems to be very difficult to do the same transactions you did with EDI with XML messages because it is much slower and it is very difficult to process this automatically because of the large number of \"messages\" or let\'s just say informationsbits coming in by that. 

We have to face that the work CC is doing is not only for very small and medium enterprises but also for bigger SMEs and big companies who are doing B2B.

Andreas Schultz

> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: David Lyon [mailto:djlyon@one.net.au]
> Gesendet am: Donnerstag, 26. April 2001 14:47
> An: andreas.schultz
> Cc: ebxml-core@lists.ebxml.org
> Betreff: Re: What do people really expect from ebXML? - the Vision
> \\\"thing\\\"
> 
> Andreas,
> 
> I respect your point of view, but we can\'t continue to live in the past
> forever !
> 
> Edifact and X.12 were designed in the days when all we had was 75 or 300
> baud modems. Everything was crunched down so that it could be 
> transmitted in
> the shortest possible time.
> 
> As I remember, to transmit an EDI message of 1000 characters at 300 baud
> used to take (1000 / 37.5cps) = 26 2/3 seconds. Those days are long since
> gone, and people need better systems and better messages.
> 
> The funny thing is, that whilst it may only take an led blink to transfer
> the same data now, you still end up with the same data. EDI now, therefore
> does no more than it did in the good old days of 2400 baud.
> 
> Moving on, The following statement is true:
> 
> > I think we have to distinguish the semantic content of EDI (especially
> > UN/EDIFACT) and the syntactical implementations. It seems to be 
> true, that
> > the implementation of EDI is very difficult (cost intensiv and complex)
> for
> > SME\\\'s. But it seems to be also true, that there is yet no 
> alternative for
> > exchanging mass data in an B2B environment.
> 
> The fact is that in a decade or so, SMEs probably won\'t need an Accounting
> system on a PC. It will be in a PDA, a mobile phone or maybe a smartcard.
> 
> Rather than transferring a Receipt on a piece of paper, to be filed in a
> wallet, or lost. They will be transferred directly into your PDA, 
> simply by
> placing it on a transfer pad at the retail store.
> 
> The receipt will go directly into the Accounting system as it 
> exists on the
> PDA.
> 
> In the next generation of electronic commerce, there\'ll be no 
> visible wires,
> no modems, no integration, no cost intensiv and no complex.
> 
> Need to check your account balance to see how much money you have in your
> account, press the button on your PDA.
> 
> There\'s no need for business it to be more complex than this.
> 
> The opportunity for developing nations having this technology is 
> vast, just
> as are the rewards for those who will work hard to produce it.
> 
> I\'m saying that it\'s time to retire EDI, just as was done with Steam
> Engines, and re-equip with something less poluting, faster and more
> convenient.
> 
> Whatever the ol\'timers may say, ebXML needs to be a set of new 
> transactions
> for a completely new world.
> 
> David Lyon
> 
 
 
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