Intro To Open-edi
Open-edi is an ISO-IEC vision of future (today's?) EDI. ISO-IEC 14662 provides a baseline for all levels of standards that are needed for the specification of Open-edi scenarios and their implementation.
Open-edi takes a generic approach. It enables organizations to establish short-term relationships quickly and cost effectively. Open-edi provides the opportunity to lower significantly the barriers to electronic data exchange by introducing standard business scenarios and the necessary services to support them. In principle, once a business scenario is agreed upon, and implementations conform to the Open-edi standards, there is no need for prior agreement among trading partners, other than the decision to engage in the Open-edi transaction in compliance with the business scenario.
The Open-edi Reference Model
The field of application of Open-edi is the electronic processing of business transactions among autonomous multiple organizations within and across sectors (e.g., public, private, industrial, geographic). It includes business transactions that involve multiple data types such as numbers, characters, images and sound. The Open-edi Reference Model provides the standards required for the inter-working of organizations, through interconnected information technology systems, and is independent of specific information technology (IT) implementations, business content or conventions, business activities and organizations.
The Open-edi Reference Model places existing EDI standards in perspective using two views to describe the relevant aspects of business transactions: the Business Operational View (BOV) and the Functional Service View (FSV).
The BOV addresses the aspects of a) the semantics of business data in business transactions and associated data interchanges, and b) the rules for business transactions which apply to the business needs of Open-edi, including:
- operational conventions,
- agreements, and
- mutual obligations.
The FSV addresses the supporting services meeting the mechanistic needs of Open-edi. It focuses on the Information Technology aspects of functional capabilities, service interfaces, and protocols, including:
- capability of initiating, operating and tracking the progress of Open-edi transactions,
- user application interface,
- transfer infrastructure interface,
- security mechanism handling,
- protocols for inter working of information technology systems of different organizations, and
- translation mechanisms.
Figure 1 sets out the relationship between the Open-edi reference model and these views. While the Model itself is developed as a standard, other standards are required. Standards are driven by, and must satisfy, the requirements identified within the Open-edi Reference Model.
Although the OEBF must satisfy the overall requirements of the Model, the primary focus shall reside with the BOV and shall be independent of the supporting FSV solution. The assumption is that the FSV will be developed by commercial software vendors which will apply a service-oriented environment, and ensure backward compatibility to traditional EDI messages. As such, the resultant BOV related standards will provide the business and information models to construct Open-edi scenarios.
Shift the Focus
Interoperation among application programs requires that there be "common ground" in their exchange of information, so that there can be common understanding and agreement on the information being jointly processed. Common ground in this exchange of information is accomplished in current EDI methodology through a neutral, application independent syntax, i.e., typically for business data a translated EDI interchange file. All consideration of application programs, how to facilitate their interoperation, functionality variations, and the business practices behind them are deliberately ignored. Instead, the current EDI standardization process concentrates solely on the structure and content of the translated interchange file. The problems associated with EDI standards, and the standard development process, are well documented and are not repeated here.
However, it is essential to understand that for Open-edi to overcome the current impediments to implementing EDI, a new paradigm must be envisioned that shifts the focus on EDI standards from the interchange file to the information contained in the business processes and is related services. While business practices from one business organization to another are highly variable, depending on competitive strategies, experience and management style, activities can be decomposed into business processes that are more generic to the type of business. This analysis through the modeling process will identify services and its related information that are likely candidates for standardization. The goal is to look for standard reusable components from which to construct eBusiness compatible software.