Re: multi-hop requirement

[Michael Joya <mike.joya@xmlglobal.com>]

Henry Lowe wrote:

> Back in the early days of TRP, we identified support of SMEs (which
> may well only have a browser and/or e-mail) requiring multi-hop.

This doesn't mandate that ebxml message protocol itself offer multi-hop
functionality. The browser itself might just be posting the same old forms
over https.

> To do business with others, either big or small, the SME would go
> through a Portal such as Yahoo.  Particularly for interactions
> with large enterprises (LE), the Portal would probably use something
> other than SNMP or HTTP (perhaps CORBA or QMseries).  Thus, multi-hop
> would be a requirement -- SME to Portal using SNMP for first hop and
> Portal to LE using CORBA for second hop.
>

Fair enough. Although this really sounds to me like two seperate
conversations altogether. First you have the  ME querying the Portal for a
specific LE,  a given classified service, or an address. Secondly, the SME
uses its learned knowledge to contact the LE directly and do business.

I'm curious. What benefits do you see to having the Portal be the
intermediary for all communications between SME and LE? I might argue that a
Portal would be useful if the SME didn't have proper ebxml protocol
functionality. After all, if that SME could send off ebxml messages, it
wouldn't need to rely directly in the Portal for communications; that SME
could do so itself. Then again, if it couldn't, multihop messaging would be
unecessary; the only ebxml messages would be between the Portal and the LE.