ebxml-msg — archive

[System]

In today's conference call, I believe I heard someone say that support for IM's was of particularly high priority because they are needed by CommerceOne. Earlier email has cited CommerceOne and Ariba as examples of IM's: processing intermediaries. If the intermediaries were merely and exclusively routing intermediaries, then that might be one thing. However, I don't believe for a minute that C1 and Ariba consider themselves as mere routers. Do you agree that a compelling reason for providing IM functionality is to meet the needs of compannies such as CommerceOne and Ariba? I confess that I do not have as good an understanding as ought to of how business processes would work in situations where a company such as CommerceOne or Ariba (their customers, actually, if I am getting this right) would serve as an IM. If you agree that this is a motivating case for IM's, I wonder if you could explain how IM's fit into this picture. As I understand it, these companies make software that can be used to establish a "marketplace", in which, say, buyers and sellers, rather than interoperating in a direct point-by-point fashion, interoperate with the marketplace instead. (Or maybe they do some things through the marketplace and other things directly?) But if I were using a marketplace, it seems to me that this would best be modelled as a business process whose parties were me and the marketplace. I don't think I understand when there would be a scenario in which party X is engaging in a business process with party Y (e.g. X sends a request to Y and Y replies to X, or Y notifies X, or Y solicits X and X replies to Y), but the messages between X and Y are sent indirectly through the "marketplace" implementation acting as an IM at the ebXML MS layer of abstraction. Why is that the right model? Thank you. -- Dan