Re: WSFL, IBM, and WSDL

[Abid Farooqui <farooqui@tampabay.rr.com>]

Dear Bob,
If you read the thread about WFSL completely you will realize that I was
just answering someone's question about the differences between WSDL and
WFSL and nothing really to do with ebxml.

My other point about automating business document processing between vastly
different market verticals like high tech electronics and HR. The point I am
trying to make was that if a PO specification for electronics industry and
HR for example is very different then implementation will be harder than if
they all followed the same standard for a PO. ebXML has pushed this to the
verticals to decide for themselves which gives us the same kind of scenario
as with todays EDIFACT, X12 and the list goes on. I don't see any
discussion, analysis or even an attempt to solve this in any paper.
I will say though that ebXML documentation is too high level without enough
concrete examples and there is no logical order recommended to read it in
(too many white papers that are not useful for development). Also some of it
seems to documentation for the sake of documentation. As a developer who
wants to implement an ebxml server and who has not been involved in it for
the last 18 or so months, I have not been able to find the head or the tail
for ebxml specification. There is no reference implementation or toolkit
either which would help. High level specification is all dandy but the proof
is in the pudding. In this respect web services seem to be way ahead of
ebxml even though there are some problems there that need to be addressed. I
do think that the documentation can be better organized, summarized and
needs to be more to the point for developers. May be there needs to be a
developer's guide that touches it all just enough for a developer to look at
and understand. Developers really don't need or care about the business
case, white papers etc.
Sincerely,
Abid Farooqui

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Haugen" <linkage@interaccess.com>
To: "'Abid Farooqui'" <farooqui@tampabay.rr.com>;
<ebxml-dev@lists.ebxml.org>
Sent: Friday, June 08, 2001 7:32 AM
Subject: RE: WSFL, IBM, and WSDL


> <Abid Farooqui> (collected from three messages)
> Anyway, even if we go with the approach you suggest, let me ask this.
> How are you planning to automate business processes across vastly
different
> verticals without the kind of pain that is involved in doing so today.
> Because if we still have to go through all that kind of stuff, we can just
> put ebXML and all other SME solutions on the shelf and just stick with how
> things are today.
>
> Oh I also forgot to mention about WFSL ... it kind of also tells you in
what
> order to call different methods of a web service. If you have a shopping
> cart service with methods like "getCart", "addItem", "checkOut" etc. It
will
> not make sense to try to checkOut before at least calling "getCart" right?
> These things are kind of missing from WSDL. Although they can be easily
> added there. They did not have to come up with a new thing for all the
> features that are in WFSL. There is a very good article talking about some
> problems within WSDL in the June/July issue of XML magazine
>
http://www.xmlmag.com/upload/free/features/xml/2001/06jun01/ab0103/ab0103.as
p
> </Abid Farooqui>
>
> Abid, which ebXML documents have you studied?
> For example, have you studied the business process documents?
> They're the ones with Business Process as the project team on page
> http://www.ebxml.org/specs/index.htm
>
> The ebXML answers to the above problems and questions are in those
> documents.  I'd be interested to know if your questions indicate that
> you have not read those documents, or you have read them but the
> answers are presented too obscurely.
>
> Thanks,
> Bob Haugen