OASIS Stamps Approval on ebXML CPPA

The OASIS interoperability group
Monday has finally ratified the ebXML
Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement (CPPA) v2.0 as an OASIS Open
Standard, making the protocol law in the consortium.


ebXML CPPA defines business partners’ technical rights and documents
agreements between partners to allow businesses to engage in safe electronic
business-to-business transactions. Such collaboration, which ranges
globally, is key to harness the power of the Internet in conducting billions
of dollars of e-business.


ebXML CPPA ensures interoperability between two parties despite the fact
that they may use software from disparate sources. The CPP defines a party’s
message-exchange capabilities and the business collaborations that it
supports. The CPA defines the way two business parties will interact in
performing the chosen business collaborations.


Dale Moberg of Cyclone Commerce, chair of the OASIS ebXML CPPA Technical
Committee, said the standard will also facilitate the transition of older
applications based on Electronic Data Interchange to
ebXML-based platforms.


High-tech analyst Joanne Friedman, vice president of META Group, applauded
the ratification, calling ebXML CPPA “technically proficient.”


“ebxml CPPA will foster global collaborative ebusiness growth by removing
barriers to entry and eliminating the high cost and complexity of trading
partner on-boarding,” Friedman said. “Valuable to any organization focused
on adopting standards.”


Not all analysts harbor the same optimism for ebXML, however. If ebXML’s function sounds a lot like Web services, it’s because it’s true. That is one of the reasons why ZapThink Senior Analyst Ron Schmelzer told internetnews.com many industry analysts are skeptical as to how readily ebXML will be adopted. While Sun and major players are backing it, Schmelzer said Microsoft and IBM prefer to support Web services standards, which are more general in nature, to the B2B-oriented ebXML protocol.


That said, Schmelzer said “a lot of us analysts think ebXML will find its way in the Web services arena” but how that might happen is unclear.


The passage of ebXML CPPA is the fruit of more than two years of development
and much tweaking among its creators, which includes small and large
high-tech firms alike, including: Commerce One, Cyclone Commerce, E2open,
HP, IBM, Intel, IONA, Mercator, SAP, SeeBeyond, Sterling Commerce, Sun
Microsystems, Sybase, TIBCO, Vitria and webMethods.


To be sure, ebXML CPPA faced a long, winding road to acceptance, including
an extensive public review, OASIS ebXML CPPA Technical Committee approval,
and multiple tests. The ebXML CPP committee was created
in June 2001, and a number of facets of ebXML have been tweaked or completed
along the way, including the ebXML
Registry Services Specification
and ebXML
Messaging Service Specification 2.0.


In related news, the ebXML OASIS UN/CEFACT Joint Marketing Team published
version 1.0 of the ebXML Adoption
Update
, a listing of ebXML implementations, projects, products and
industry initiatives from around the world.

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