RE: RE: Trading Partner/Party Discovery/Agreement Use Cases

[David Burdett <david.burdett@commerceone.com>]

I agree with Dale especially where he says ... "Discovery _may_ involve
certain "bootstrap" issues that impact what elements are mandatory within a
header."

Particularly I think that there is a use case where there is no prior
*direct*" contact between two parties before one of those parties sends the
other an ebXML compliant message. In this case the party sending the message
needs to be able to include, or refer to, information about themselves **in
the message**. This is described in the second use case I put forward. The
current version of of the Message Header does not allow this type of
interaction. I think it must though since it is a very common style of doing
eCommerce that is being used right now as I described in an email earlier
today subject: "Trading Partner/Party Discovery/Agreement Use Cases", time:
"Fri 08/25/2000 9:22 AM"

David

-----Original Message-----
From: Moberg, Dale [mailto:Dale_Moberg@stercomm.com]
Sent: Friday, August 25, 2000 6:47 AM
To: 'Mark CRAWFORD'; mwsachs@us.ibm.com
Cc: David Burdett; ebxml-tp@lists.ebxml.org
Subject: RE: RE: Trading Partner/Party Discovery/Agreement Use Cases 


I cannot speak for the others on why this discussion
is taking place but I have two motivations for
trying to find out about discovery methods
within ebXML. 

First, the ebXML header and message documents
are currently assuming that every ebXML message
has a header. Discovery requests are one proposed
type of ebXML message. Discovery _may_ involve
certain "bootstrap" issues that impact what
elements are mandatory within a header. So it is
important to understand the scope of
discovery requests and how they are proposed to
work. 

Second the POC group is considering checking
out the functionality of the registry and
discovery requests in the next round. So
requirements sufficiently definite to assist
implementation were needed yesterday :-)
Since you (Mark C.) indicate that these
discussions are completed or near completed
by other working groups, I would very
much appreciate receiving some references
to the core documents that the POC group
can read. I for one am not interested
in any turf war and am happy to build
on what has been thought through already.

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark CRAWFORD [mailto:mcrawfor@lmi.org]
Sent: Friday, August 25, 2000 6:52 AM
To: mwsachs@us.ibm.com; Moberg, Dale
Cc: david.burdett@commerceone.com; ebxml-tp@lists.ebxml.org
Subject: Re:RE: Trading Partner/Party Discovery/Agreement Use Cases 



I am not sure why this discussion is taking place.  The purpose of this
group is
not to determine the components of ebXML, nor its basic requirements.  The
basic
requirements are documented, and Architecture, Business Process, and R&R are
well down the path on the discovery issue.

    Mark
Mark Crawford
Research Fellow
E-business Strategies
______
LMI Logistics Management Institute
2000 Corporate Ridge, McLean, VA 22102-7805
(703) 917-7177   Fax (703) 917-7518
mcrawfor@lmi.org
http://www.lmi.org
"Opportunity is what you make of it"



____________________Reply Separator____________________
Subject:    RE: Trading Partner/Party Discovery/Agreement Use Cases 
Author: <mwsachs@us.ibm.com>
Date:       8/24/00 6:09 PM

The discovery capability will be important to spontaneous e-commerce, but
it should not be required by ebXML.  Another scenario is that
representatives of the two partners sit together, agree on the application
process and jointly compose a TPA containing the information they must know
about each other.

Regards,
Marty

****************************************************************************
****
*****

Martin W. Sachs
IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
P. O. B. 704
Yorktown Hts, NY 10598
914-784-7287;  IBM tie line 863-7287
Notes address:  Martin W Sachs/Watson/IBM
Internet address:  mwsachs @ us.ibm.com
****************************************************************************
****
*****



"Moberg, Dale" <Dale_Moberg@stercomm.com> on 08/23/2000 11:48:18 AM

To:   "'David Burdett'" <david.burdett@commerceone.com>, "EbXML Trading
      Partner (E-mail)" <ebxml-tp@lists.ebxml.org>
cc:
Subject:  RE: Trading Partner/Party Discovery/Agreement Use Cases



>(Dave Burdett) Assumptions
>>Assumption 1 - Each party must know sufficient information about each
other that they can send each
>>other messages that each will be able to successfully process.
>>This assumption is illustrated in the diagram below
>> that shows the "end state" of the discovery process.
>>[omitted]

1.   Do the trading parties both need to be involved in discovery?
It might be possible to consult a clearinghouse with searches
over "stainless steel ball bearing supplier adhering to specifications
MIL-STD 322332" and proceed to obtain or negotiate a TPA. What kind
of query messages are allowed for discovery? Is it to be hard-wired
into the protocol that it would be necessary to know the contact URL
for a specific trading partner? Will discovery of candidate trading
partners by categories of goods/services be supported? Can this
discovery then itself supply references to contact URLs for negotiatiated
TPAs, template TPAs (take it or leave it TPAs), and so on. In general
what kinds of discovery services will be available?  Might additional
parties be involved in the TPA setup (legal reviewers, financial reviewers,
business strategists, ...) so that there is a workflow component to a
negotiated TPA setup?

>>Assumption 2 - The method by which a party discovers
information about another party is immaterial.
1.   Some methods may be made available to "the public at
large"; other methods might be reserved to entities
fulfilling some special condition (certified by some
financial agency or whatnot) I am not certain what
this assumption really is trying to indicate. Here are some guesses:
that however one arrives at a TPA, once the TPA is in place,
the TPA governs the business and ebxml processes.
Or possibly, parties may choose to divulge information about
themselves through a third party or not. Whatever they choose as
policy here does not make a difference in how the discovery
process works. (I think this might well be false, though.)
At any rate, I am uncertain what this assumption is really saying,
so I would like to see it restated somehow.

>> If a first party wants to send a message to
a second party all they need to know is:
·    the types of process that the second party supports
and the specifications that they follow
1.. I take it that this list is a list of prior knowledge
that is a prerequisite for discovery  Actually I would
think that at least some discovery processes would make
very minimal demands on what needs to be known. So I am
unclear why it should be assumed that the first party needs
to know in advance what specifications and types of business(?)
processes are supported by the second party. This needs some
explanation before I would buy in. Wouldn't these data items
be things we might want to discover?

·    the transport/data communications that should be used to send a
message to the second party
1. Again, why wouldn't this be something that we are trying to discover?

·    whether or not the second party will accept the message from the
first party

    I don't think this would be good to require. Leave the
 "listening ports" unconstrained for at least submitting
the request and then allow there to be a response to say
that authorization is needed to continue. Here I assume that
the message to be accepted is the "ebXML discovery" message.
Otherwise, why wouldn't this be something that we are trying to discover?



-----Original Message-----
From: David Burdett [mailto:david.burdett@commerceone.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2000 5:36 PM
To: EbXML Trading Partner (E-mail); ebXML Transport (E-mail)
Subject: Trading Partner/Party Discovery/Agreement Use Cases


Folks

A couple of use cases for the TP group that I am also copying to the
Transport Group. Do folks these these use cases are reasonable?

David
 <<Party Discovery Use Cases 01.doc>>

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