Re: Trading Partner Logical Identification based on EDIFACT or X12qualifiers

[David RR Webber <Gnosis_@compuserve.com>]

Message text written by INTERNET:dick@8760.com
>It depends on what you mean by "expose its interfaces":

- I can expose information about how to conduct E-Commerce with me/my
server to
a trading partner via e-mail, fax, html pages, programmatic interfaces, xml
document, sound waves, Braille, et al. In this case I'm providing my
trading
partner with the information they need to engage in an E-Commerce
transaction
with me.

Many of the customers I work with "expose their interface" via a industry
standard Trading Partner Agreement in MS Word format. This "hard copy"
document
is exchanged between legal departments using FedEx or some other freight
carrier.

- If you mean "expose its interfaces" as in the "distributed object" sense,
then
again there are several alternatives; servlets, CGI executables, ASP, JSP,
Distributed object access technology (Corba, DCOM), RPC technology (ONC,
DCE,
SOAP, XML-RPC), MOM alternatives (MQSeries, MSMQ).

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Good question!   From my earlier outburst you probably gathered NEITHER of
these!

I simply mean an XML document instance that contains ebXML compliant
information
about the interchange and myself.  Part of this could be tpaML style
profile info', 
part of it could be your public key/ security information, and part of it
could be
classification style Business Process information (GUIDE classification
layer is 
one such) so I know what ebXML transactions you support.

It should be part of the ebXML spec's that a TP can query this information.
 About the 
ONLY thing I would want you to FAX or email to him is the location of that
configuration
file or repository lookup reference!   He would then fire up his ebXML
compliant 
software, type that in - hit the 'Configure Interchange' button and
continue.

Anything else looks like mumbo-jumbo when the average user is concerned.

Plug-n-Play for EDI that's the mantra I want here.

DW.