RE: FYI: Article on ebXML and Interoperability

[Matt Kirkendall <matt.kirkendall@infocus.com>]

Tom, you nailed it.  The technology is really the easy piece, where the
other 95% of an implementation is spent in relationships and business
processes to determine content and rules and extents.  I've been watching
for anything that gets us all closer to standardizing the
messages--including content, so that EAI issues can be minimized and common
documents can be shared among our other trading partners. This doesn't
really get to the notion of a true standard, so I lean more toward X12 in an
XML format for our B2B initiatives (where the baseline has already been
set). I can modify these for more content and extent as document standards
emerge. 



"What I am, and I expect others are, looking for is a base template of
messages
to exchange with trading partners.  I want to know *how* we're going to find
each other on the net, how we're going to identify each to the other, what
the
format and content of our messages will be, and what documented and
agreed-to
extensions there might be."