ebXML at Five

Over the years since my since my original series of articles on ebXML people have suggested that I should write about how ebXML has progressed. The fifth anniversary of the completion of the initial ebXML effort seemed to be as good a time as any. In doing this retrospective I wanted to offer a forum to viewpoints and voices other than my own, so I issued a call for participation to the ebXML-dev and edi-l listservs. Three original submissions were received. I also issued a general request for information about mission-critical, production ebXML deployments to the same listservs.

NOTE: I had originally planned to post this retrospective in May of 2006. However, I experienced some unanticipated personal conflicts and was out of the office most of that month. Due to catching up from that absence and other later professional commitments it was not until December 2006 that I was finally able to complete this piece. Most of the information was current as of May 2006, but in some cases it is current as of December 2006.

Original Submissions

I wish to offer my sincere thanks to Monica Martin, Dale Moberg, Tim McGrath, and the members of the OASIS ebXML Joint Committee for their submissions. These three submissions offer good, thoughtful commentary and summaries about ebXML at five years from people who are actively involved in the ebXML community.

• The Framework for eBusiness - OASIS White Paper by The OASIS ebXML Joint Committee, 24 April 2006
• The ebBP (ebXML Business Process Specification Schema) - OASIS White Paper by The OASIS Business Process TC (Dale Moberg and Monica J. Martin, co-chairs)
• What's a Heaven For -Tim McGrath

Reference Sites for Implementation Information

• ebXML Implementations at ebXML.org. A few are mission-critical production implementations, but most are pilots, proof of concept, research projects, open-source development projects, or product announcements.
• ebXML Case Studies at ebXML.org (Note: I had personal involvement with the DISA DRIve initiative presented as one of the case studies. It didn't get very far and to my knowledge is now defunct.)
• ebXML Forum
• Hong Kong Center for E-Commerce Infrastructure Development - Information about several deployment success stories involving ebXML
• Registries based on freebXML at the feebXML site at SourceForge

Mission Critical Production Deployments

I received fewer original submissions than I thought was necessary to provide a well-rounded picture of ebXML at five years. So, as noted above I asked for information mission-critical production depolyments. Pilot projects, case studies, proofs of concept, reference implementations, open-source initiatives, commercial products, endorsements, and official recommendations are all important, but the best measure of a technology's acceptance is someone actually using it every day.

My sincere appreciation is offered to everyone who responded to my requests for information, including and especially those who challenged me in one way or another. I extend special thanks to David RR Webber for his many messages and tenacity. I learned something from all of you. At the very least I learned that there are still a lot of people who are very passionate about ebXML.

Despite these efforts, I was only able to compile a list of less than twenty mission-critical, production deployments (most with multiple participants). I'm sure that the list isn't comprehensive or exhaustive about ebXML implementations as of May 2006. It is merely what was forwarded to me and what I was able to discover through my own research. But I was surprised to find this few. My opinion is that I didn't hear about more or discover more deployments because they don't exist. Others offered opinions that they do exist, but people just didn't want to offer information about them to me for various reasons. Draw your own conclusions.

Many of the deployments are of the hub-and-spoke variety with somewhat closed or captive communities. While they may handle large numbers of messages and have many participants, they hardly equate to the broad, heterogeneous trading communities currently using various EDI messaging standards over a variety of protocols.

The items listed here encompass most of the information that was submitted to me. With only a few exceptions, the deployments on this list were verified on the web either by the organization responsible for the deployment or via detailed reports by an independent public source such as a trade journal or conference presentation. I did not use second hand reports via e-mail or brief mention in an article or on a web page that I could not verify by other means. If you know of other deployments that you would like to see listed here please let me know. I will add them if they meet the same criteria and were in production as of December 2006. Note: For registries, those listed appear to be live with login screens, but I did not evaluate their content or how much they are being used.

• European Federation of Energy Traders (EFET) - ebMS
• Criminal Justice System in the Netherlands - ebMS - "Electronic Information Exchange in the Criminal Justice System in the Netherlands", Pim van der Eijk, Sonnenglanz Consulting - XML Europe 2004
• Environmental Public Health Tracking Network - ebMS
• Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) - ebMS
• General Motors' Retail Inventory Management (RIM) - ebMS, reported in ComputerWorld
• HL7 Registry - ebRR
• Korea Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs - Adopted ebXML infrastructure to send and receive official documents with governmental and non-governmental organizations. ebMS reported to have been installed at 65 organizations, with another 650 planned (received by e-mail, no links available).
• Norwegian e-Health Infrastructure - based on XML, ebXML and PKI - OASIS Case Study - UN/EDIFACT over ebMS replacing X.400
• STEEL24-7 - ebMS A virtual communications hub serving the European steel industry in order to facilitate collaboration between buyers and sellers; also the subject of an article in the Cover pages
• XML Registry and Repository for the Education Community - A Collaborative effort of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA), the Postsecondary Electronics Standards Council (PESC), and the education standards community.
• UK National Health Service NPfIT - ebMS - OASIS Case Study
• U.S. Centers for Disease Control - Public Health Information Network Messaging System (PHINMS) - ebMS, CPA/CPP and HL7 messages
• US Department of Defense Metadata Registry - ebRR
• Volkswagen of America - ebMS - "Driving Standards" in Information Week, Mar 1, 2004. Now reportedly live with 1,000 ebXML messaging connections to retail dealer systems.

Other Articles of Interest

• "Carmakers unite on global data sharing" Network World - "Show organizer Automotive Industry Action Group surveyed 30 large truck, car and equipment makers to get a sense of which technologies they are using as they move toward service-oriented architectures (SOA). Almost all of them said they are using Web services, though a quarter also said they are using ebXML."
• "ebXML - 5 years later" - Klaus Naujok, chair of the ebXML Work Group during the - Blog entry at Klaus' Korner

Closing Comments

© Michael C. Rawlins

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