RE: Does the current CPA/CPP spec support multi-hop?

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

Philippe said ..

>>>The bottomline is that we need to differentiate between CPA information
that
covers the business aspects of the interactions between two partners, and
the information that is required to carry the message over possibly multiple
hops.<<<

I totally agree. It should be possible to specify them separately but then
link them together. I do understand that doing this within the constraints
of version 1.0 could be "time challenged". If we don't though there will be
an inconsistency between the "CPA" information that the TRP specs needs and
the information actually contained in the CPA.

David

-----Original Message-----
From: Philippe DeSmedt [mailto:PDeSmedt@viquity.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2001 11:37 AM
To: Burdett, David; 'Stefano POGLIANI'; Martin W Sachs;
ebxml-tp@lists.ebxml.org
Subject: RE: Does the current CPA/CPP spec support multi-hop?


David,

I like your suggestion to have, in the case of multi-hop messaging, a
separate CPA covering the transport aspects on each of the hops. The
business agreement between A and B can still be encoded in a CPA between
those two parties, but we do indeed need provisions (possibly as some form
of CPA) that address the specifics of the transport on each of the hops. It
may, for instance, be possible to have different transport bindings on each
hop (e.g. HTTP between A and the hub, and SMTP between B and the hub), and I
am not sure that such case is adequately covered in the current CPA spec.
Also, as you mention in your ebXML-to-EDI example, there may not be an
ebXML-compliant CPA between A and B, but we may still want to have one
between A and the hub (assuming that A speaks ebXML). 

In addition, there may also be cases where the role of the hub is more than
just a forwarding mechanism, but less than that of a full-fledged trading
partner, i.e., the hub may provide some value-added services, for instance
in the area of security. How CPAs can address that modality/topology is yet
an entirely different issue that I do not believe we have covered in CPA so
far.

The bottomline is that we need to differentiate between CPA information that
covers the business aspects of the interactions between two partners, and
the information that is required to carry the message over possibly multiple
hops. In addition, we may want to take a closer look at what functionality
is actually provided at the intermediate points.

-Philippe
_______________________________
Philippe De Smedt
Architect
Viquity Corporation (www.viquity.com)
1161 N. Fair Oaks Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089-2102
(408) 548-9722
(408) 747-5586 (fax)
pdesmedt@viquity.com


-----Original Message-----
From: Burdett, David [mailto:david.burdett@commerceone.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2001 10:51 AM
To: 'Stefano POGLIANI'; Martin W Sachs; ebxml-tp@lists.ebxml.org
Subject: RE: Does the current CPA/CPP spec support multi-hop?


Stefano

Although you can think of it as one business process with three parties, I
don't think this is the best way of looking at it as:
1. It would require that for every new business process between A and B,
then the Hub woould have to be involved whereas all that is required is for
the Hub to forward the new message.
2. One of the parties, e.g. Party B, may not be ebXML aware as they are
using EDI and therefore cannot sensibly enter into a CPA with Party A.

The better way to think of it,IMO, is as a two CPAs between A and the Hub,
and B and the Hub which are only concerned with the transport of messages
and not the business process.

Thoughts?

David