Bolero.net is the latest in a line of initiatives designed to
develop universally-accepted trading standards. But too many
standards will hinder XML-based e-commerce, warns Danny
Bradbury
The battle for the hearts and minds of e-commerce implementers
got a little more heated this week thanks to an announcement from
Bolero.net.
The Internet trading standards consortium unveiled a raft of new
XML-based trading schemas for e-commerce partners, delivering a
broadside to the Biztalk standards initiative.
Bolero.net, formed by banking consortium SWIFT and insurance
group TTClub, has released an initial set of document type
definitions designed to appeal to companies engaged in
international trade. There will be further announcements in June,
which will cover 90% of all common trade transactions, says
Bolero.net.
The service, which also offers a legal infrastructure for
international trade in the form of the Bolero Rule book, uses the
Unified Modelling Language (UML) - a graphical software design
language originally produced by Rational Software - to denote
business processes. The UML documents are then used to create an
XML-based schema for the businesses concerned.
The creation of commonly-accepted document type definitions and
schemas for XML-based e-commerce transactions is also the goal of
Biztalk.org, an industry drive started by Microsoft to introduce
guidelines for publishing and using XML schemas.
The www.biztalk.org site already has a variety of downloadable
XML schemas submitted by member companies.
Microsoft's John Noakes says Biztalk will help companies to
leverage their existing non-XML-based resources by providing a
framework for migrating existing standards to XML.
Strictly speaking, Microsoft isn't attempting to hijack the XML
standard, although the implementation of a Microsoft-backed
standard for the introduction of XML schemas can only be a good
thing for the company.
It will leverage the Biztalk.org initiative to draw industry
support for its own Biztalk Server, the e-commerce transformation
and transaction server, which went into beta last week and which
will hopefully ship in November.
"What's especially impressive is the way that they have put
their arms around the whole payment and insurance mechanism," says
Noakes, commenting on Bolero.net. "It does look very impressive. We
haven't had any direct dealings with them but I'd like to speak to
them."
Bolero.net's attitude to Microsoft is a little more ambivalent,
if comments from the initiative's project manager Peter Brooks are
anything to go by.
"The problem I see with the Microsoft approach is that if you go
and search for an order, you will find 10 different versions of an
order that different companies have put up there," he
criticises.
"We are trying to take a cross-industry approach and take a
broader perspective. There won't be lots of different orders but
there will be flexibility in the order for whatever parties need
it."
Bolero.net isn't alone in trying to define a
universally-acceptable standard for XML-based transactions.
The Business and Accounting Software Developers Association
(Basda) has released the first schemas as part of its eBIS-XML
initiative, with which it also seeks to cover cross-sector
business-to-business e-commerce processes.
Brooks says he hasn't communicated with Basda, emphasising the
international focus of his initiative.
Such a standards drive is a laudable goal, but duplicating these
efforts is bound to lead to confusion.
With all of these standards initiatives trying to carve out
design frameworks and universally-accepted schemas separately and
at different levels, one thing is clear: users will remain
conservative about XML-based e-commerce for the next couple of
years at least.