RE: [ebxml-dev] <BinaryCollaboration> in eBPSS

Nandini:

There is nothing such as “notification of success”. Success is assumed otherwise a notification of failure is sent.

The best the spec provides today is a receipt acknowledgement for the response. You could use that in combination with the notification of failure.

It is also important to realize that a collaboration does not stop if a transaction fails. The choreography of business transactions can be designed: a) to enable a business transaction whether or not the previous transaction succeeds, b) to enable different business transaction activities in the case it failed and it succeeded.

The only thing the spec says, if the transaction failed both parties agree to dismiss any claims relative to this transaction. This means that if the transaction is about sending a purchase order, and if it failed, none of the parties can assume that the order will be executed.

You are raising an important issue, which I think can only be resolved if we either make the notification failure part of the business transaction protocol rather than a separate business transaction as it is today, or by making an explicit notification of success (either with a separate business transaction, or as a timeout). I personally favor the former solution.

I will bring your feedback to the BPSS team, thanks,

Jean-Jacques Dubray____________________

Chief Architect

Eigner Precision Lifecycle Management

200 Fifth Avenue

Waltham, MA 02451

Tel: 781-472-6317

Cell: 508-816-4518

email: jjd@eigner.com

url: www.eigner.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Nandini Ektare [mailto:nandini.ektare@sun.com]
Sent: Monday, April 08, 2002 12:42 PM
To: Jean-Jacques Dubray
Cc: ebxml org
Subject: Re: [ebxml-dev] <BinaryCollaboration> in eBPSS

Hello Jean-Jacques,

Thank you for the detailed explanation.

Related to the earlier question, I have one more question reg. the semantics of the choreography.

eBPSS states that the RequestingRole within the BusinessTransaction is the arbiter to decide whether the Transaction failed or succeeded. For Failures the spec gives unambiguous resolution. The requestingRole rolls back the transaction and sends a notification of failure in a separate transaction if it fails and respondingRole rolls back the transaction and just sends an exception signal.

However, the spec does not seem to explicitly specify how success of a transaction is communicated to the responding role. Does the requestingRole send some sort of success message to the respondingRole? How does the respondingRole know the transaction succeeded? Is this left to implementors of ebXML?

The reason this question is related to the earlier one is that, had we assumed that initiating role and responding role do not get to become requesters as well as responders, then the responder need not know the success of business transaction. Within the Binary Collaboration, the responder is a mere listener to request messages and it is the requesting role that is responsible for the transition to business states on success.
But since initiating and responding roles can become requesters as well as responders within the binary collaboration, how to address the scenario below?

<BusinessTransactionActivity name="Place Order Activity">
        businessTransaction="Place Order"
        fromAuthorizedRole="buyer"
        toAuthorizedRole="seller" />

<BusinessTransactionActivity name="In between Activity">
        businessTransaction="In between"
        fromAuthorizedRole="buyer"
        toAuthorizedRole="seller" />

<BusinessTransactionActivity name="Send Invoice Activity">
        businessTransaction="Send Invoice"
        fromAuthorizedRole="seller"
        toAuthorizedRole="buyer" />

The Success of "Place Order Activity" business transaction is decided by the role "buyer". And hence he can transition to next business state "In between Activity" as again the "buyer" is the requesting role. However on success of "In between Activity", it is the "seller" who has to initiate the next transaction. And the spec does not specify how the "seller" gets notified for the success of earlier transaction "In between Activity".

Thanks,
Nandini.

Jean-Jacques Dubray wrote:

Nandini:

Yes, the BPSS team acknowledged that this was a bit confusing and we are fixing this in the next release of BPSS.

Initiating and Responding roles are just here to identify the two roles of the collaboration (e.g. buyer and seller) and to identify which role will “initiate” the collaboration, namely send the first message. The definition of these roles does not impact their ability to participate in individual transactions as either the fromRole or toRole. This is completely independent. This is actually one of the great strength of the BPSS model: as the it does not take the point of view of anyone (like an API could do). You express a collaboration as an execution of business transactions between two roles. Any of the two roles can initiate a business transaction.

By contrast, a business transaction definition should not have any specific role. You could use buyer and seller in a business transaction definition but it is better to use abstract roles such as initiator and responder. It is only the usage of a business transaction in a collaboration (aka a business transaction activity) which specifies the specific roles that executes that particular business transaction.

Hope that helps.

Jean-Jacques Dubray____________________

Chief Architect

EignerPrecision Lifecycle Management

200 Fifth Avenue

Waltham, MA 02451

Tel: 781-472-6317

Cell: 508-816-4518

email: jjd@eigner.com

url: www.eigner.com

-----Original Message-----

From: Nandini Ektare [mailto:nandini.ektare@sun.com]
Sent: Monday, April 08, 2002 11:42 AM
To: ebxml org
Subject: [ebxml-dev] <BinaryCollaboration> in eBPSS

Hi

I have a question specific to the BinaryCollaboration element in ebXML BPSS.

The BinaryCollaboration element describes the business activities and choreography of these activites.
Each Business Transaction Activity has fromAuthorizedRole and toAuthorizedRole.

What is the use of InitiatingRole and RespondingRole in the business collaboration?

Does it mean that during a binary collaboration the requestor role cannot become responder role in the next business activity?
For e.g. is the Binary collaboration below valid?

<BinaryCollaboration name ="Product Purchase" timeToPerform="P5D">
    <IntiatingRole name="buyer"/>
    <RespondingRole name="seller"/>
    <BusinessTransactionActivity name="Place Order Activity">
        businessTransaction="Place Order"
        fromAuthorizedRole="buyer"
        toAuthorizedRole="seller" />
    <BusinessTransactionActivity name="Send Invoice Activity">
        businessTransaction="Send Invoice"
        fromAuthorizedRole="seller"
        toAuthorizedRole="buyer" />
</BinaryCollaboration>

Thanks,
Nandini.

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