U.S. Trails Other Nation of EBXML

Though the United Nations-backed Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) consortium has continued to propel ebXML, and companies around the world are adopting the framework, ebXML has seemingly fallen off the radar among U.S. efforts.

But that doesn't mean ebXML is out of the picture. Conceived as an XML-based framework similar to EDI for conducting e-business transactions,and backed by vendors such as Sun Microsystems, Vitria, PeopleSoft and Fujitsu,ebXML continues to thrive, proponents insist.

"EbXML has significant support around the world," said Monica Martin, XML Web services standards architect, Java Web services, at Sun. "This tends to get overshadowed by all the buzz and marketing push behind Web services, especially in the United States."

EbXML comprises six groups of specifications: architecture, requirements, registration, collaboration, process and messaging. Together, they create a larger framework that attempts to solve the problem of creating XML-based integration systems for global e-business transactions.

The term "Web services" refers to specifications that mirror much of the work being done in ebXML. The difference is Web services handle these specifications piece by piece, rather than in a holistic framework. Web services specs include WS-Security, WS-Choreography, WS-Transaction and WS-ReliableMessaging, each of which handles a specific function necessary for large Web services-oriented architectures to work properly.

For example, WS-Choreography describes how to coordinate interaction between Web services. Its equivalent in ebXML is ebXML Business Process, which uses UML and XML to describe and model business processes for interaction.

In the United States, the Web services specs receive the bulk of attention mainly because of their focus on solving the issue du jour.

"Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, people will choose things that solve an immediate problem," said Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst at Zapthink. "Nobody wants to buy a large framework,people want to buy solutions to problems now."

The backing of industry heavyweights IBM and Microsoft, the thought leaders in Web services, also is propelling the specs to the forefront stateside.

"This country is driven more by technology vendors promoting the next standards and the next technology," said Brad Murphy, senior vice president of strategic business development at Valtech, a solution provider based in Paris.

In fact, most observers agree that other nations tend to be more farsighted than the United States when adopting technology. Dale Waldt, senior consultant with solution provider aXtive Minds, said this explains why ebXML is more of a phenomenon overseas. For instance, Australia's National Office of the Information Economy, which drives technology standards in that country, committed to ebXML in April 2002 and is working to define how even small businesses can use ebXML as a model for adopting Web services. And the Korean Institute for Electronic Commerce has developed an ebXML-based architecture that enables businesses to register Web services.

Still, some question whether the international adoption of ebXML can overcome the absence of support from Microsoft and IBM. "The ebXML set of specs is not going anywhere very fast," Schmelzer said.

For now, though, both ebXML and the Web services specs will continue their uneasy coexistence, observers said. Many believe that, eventually, efforts around the two sets of standards could merge to benefit the greater good.

"The important thing is that there are still important user requirements to be pursued," said aXtive Minds' Waldt. "I think this is an opportunity for more convergence of activities, rather than pitting groups against each other."