Endorsement for ebMS

[Alan Kotok <akotok@disa.org>]

TO: JMT

Our friend (and Weekly Wire subscriber) Doug Kaye, in his new IT Strategy 
newsletter, highlights an article about ebXML messaging in a Web services 
site/newsletter called LooselyCoupled.Com.  The article "Sending an 
unmistakeable message" by David Longworth discusses Steel24-7's use of ebMS 
and how it provides a migration path from EDI to XML, while still offering 
reliability and security.  See 
http://www.looselycoupled.com/stories/2003/message-infr0528.html for the 
article. (Can't imagine how he found out about Steel24-7 ....)

But the real endorsement comes from the site's editor, Phil Wainewright in 
his Weblog entry, "Transactional messaging" 
(http://www.looselycoupled.com/blog/2003_05_25_lc.htm#200358404) discussing 
the article ...

<quote>
I was somewhat surprised when David Longworth first filed this article to 
discover how little I knew about ebMS, considering its apparent and 
ready-to-go suitability for plugging this gaping hole in the web services 
standards stack. In view of how much debate has been expended on this topic 
in recent weeks, the lack of hype surrounding ebMS is astounding.

Perhaps one explanation is that no vendor has any vested interest in 
promoting ebMS (though if that were the true reason, it would be quite a 
telling indictment of the vendor community). A more likely explanation is 
that web services purists tend to dismiss anything associated with ebXML as 
being tainted by association with inflexible, proprietary EDI solutions.

Nevertheless, as David's article this week makes clear, it would actually 
be quite a smart move to bring the vast mass of EDI users into the ambit of 
web services, and ebMS has been designed to do precisely that. What's more, 
it's probably a mistake to dismiss the combined experience of a global 
community that has been attempting to perfect the art of enterprise-class 
e-business messaging over the past several decades. They've probably learnt 
a good few lessons about things that wouldn't even occur to you if your 
only knowledge of messaging was based on what happens within the sterile 
confines of a single enterprise network computing environment.
</quote>

This may find its way into ebXML Forum.

Alan Kotok
Editor, < E-Business*Standards*Today />
http://www.disa.org/dailywire/
Data Interchange Standards Association
akotok@disa.org
+1 703-518-4174

p.s. From the Merriam-Webster online dictionary

Ambit:
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin ambitus, from ambire
Date: 1597
1 : CIRCUIT, COMPASS
2 : the bounds or limits of a place or district
3 : a sphere of action, expression, or influence : SCOPE