Business-to-business connectivity and emerging protocols for E-biz

Summary form only given. For many years ED1 served as the dominant protocol for e-biz over private networks. Due to the rapid spread of the Internet, several new Business-to-Business (B2B) interaction protocols have become popular, e.g., Open Buying on the Internet (OBI), RosettaNet, and Vendor-defined protocols such as Ariba's Punchout process. We will describe these protocols, with an emphasis on their similarity and differences. B2B marketplaces are emerging as hubs through which suppliers connect to buyers. We outline the connectivity requirements between these marketplaces, and the Marketplace-to-Marketplace (M2M) protocols that are required. We show how all of these emerging protocols can be specified in XML using a trading partner agreement (TPA). The TPA specifies three layers in the B2B protocol: The transport, document exchange and business protocol layers. Essentially, the transport layer provides a choice of transport such as HTTP, SMTP, FTP, and specifies related information; the document exchange layer handles different message formats, transformations, application level security including authentication and non-repudiation, and provides services such as audit trails and document repositories; the business protocol layer specifies the sequence of the B2B interactions, responsiveness criteria, and error handling.