XML - An opportunity for small and medium-sized enterprises
by Marcus Herm, Bizt@lk Competence
Center, Karlsruhe, Germany
Business processes are increasingly characterized by structures
operating between companies. Companies no longer act in isolation:
instead, they are integrated into geographically distributed
production networks, pursuing the production process in cooperation
with other firms. This means that exchanging data quickly and securely
between applications and systems is an increasingly important
requirement.
The companies involved need to pass relevant data and information
along the individual process chains. But as they use different
hardware and software systems, media breaks are often unavoidable.
Different data formats and structures are another obstacle to the
continuous flow of data. Even within their internal process chains,
companies often maintain data duplicated in separate systems that
cannot communicate with one another.
For example, they might save parts lists in their product
development management systems in one format, and again in another
format in their ERP systems. Constantly having to reconcile data,
possibly producing errors in the data, increases the costs and time
involved. This presents a major risk in processes which are intended
to operate beyond a company 's boundaries.
The challenge of integrating applications
As companies increasingly collaborate in this way, the new
challenge is to professionally integrate applications using different
data structures and heterogeneous operating systems. Companies also
use different applications, especially if they are involved in
different industries. We often find that suppliers on the first level
of an industry can still communicate relatively well with one another.
Industry-specific standards are relatively well accepted and widely
used.
But things change dramatically once we get to the second and third
levels of the supply chain: these companies usually serve a number of
industries and thus are far less inclined to adopt a specific industry
standard. To date, they have tended to use proprietary data formats
such as electronic data interchange (EDI), based on bi-directional
links such as EDIFACT or ANSI X.12, which is used mainly in the USA.
But this means setting up and maintaining a private telecommunications
network -an investment which is often beyond the reach of all but the
largest companies.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) continue to exchange data
and information in traditional form, by mail, fax or phone. Extensible
Markup Language (XML)can now change all this. Using the Internet and
the XML standard, SMEs can now communicate as equal partners in
electronic business transactions.
XML makes the breakthrough
XML acts as a uniform standard for exchanging business data and as
semantic middleware, through which heterogeneous applications can
communicate with one another over uniform interfaces and in a language
which everyone involved can understand. With XML, simple and complex
structures can be presented at any data level and for any category of
data. And every record in XML format also includes meta information
stating how that data is to be interpreted.
The ability to define XML applications simply and without laborious
standardization processes marks a breakthrough in business data
exchange both within and between companies. At the same time, however,
XML presents a risk which the industry must not lose sight of: it
should not use XML as a basis for developing a large number o
different industry standards. What is needed is a single, uniform
semantic set of language rules for exchanging data between industries,
worldwide.
Use existing standards
Many businesses have been using tried and tested standards -such as
the German VDA recommendations on data transmission or the STEP
organization recommendations - for some time now. These standards are
in use worldwide, so the aim must be to translate these existing
formats into the new XML syntax and the XML schemas that represent the
new semantics. This will make it possible to exploit the semantic
opportunities of XML, as this data can then be used on any platform.
Businesses can continue to use their existing systems and interfaces
for proprietary data formats with no problems -an extremely positive
solution in terms of both time and cost.
Sign of the times
any industries are already offering defined XML schemas in what are
known as repositories. ERP system suppliers have also recognized the
potential of XML. Many ERP systems have both their own XML schemas and
XML interfaces. Even EDI vendors are now including the standard in
their product strategies. The software solutions for the
implementation of XML are already in place: now it 's up to small and
medium-sized enterprises not to miss the XML boat.
 Markus
Herm from BizT@lk Competence Center in Karlsruhe, Germany is an
application integration specialist and focuses on cross-enterprise
collaboration. BizT@lk Competence Center was first established as a
division of the Institute of Machine Tools and Production Science
(wbk)at the University of Karlsruhe. Its goal is to improve knowledge
transfer between academic researchers and innovative businesses.
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