Architectures and Techniques for modern E-business Systems

Adomas Svirskas

Architectures and Techniques for modern E-business Systems


Adomas Svirskas


Agenda

• E-Business, E-Commerce, C-Commerce• E-business Architecture

– Integration issues and solutions– E-business Integration Patterns

• ebXML – the Newest Global Standard– Positioning– Main concepts– State of the Art

• Quality of Business Service

Adomas Svirskas


E-Business and E-Commerce

• The two concepts do not mean the same• They are often confused• E-commerce is a part of E-business along with:

– Infrastructure

– Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

– Business Intelligence

– Supply Chain Management

Adomas Svirskas


E-Business and E-Commerce

• E-commerce, or electronic commerce, is conducting business communications and transactions via computers and over networks. It is buying and selling of goods and services through digital communication. E-commerce also includes transactions on the World Wide Web and Internet, and modes such as electronic funds transfer, smart cards, and digital cash. Introduced around 1994 (Amazon.com).

• E-business, or electronic business, derived (the term) from 'e-commerce'. It is conducting business on the Internet, but not just buying and selling but also servicing customers and collaborating with business partners. The term conveys that the business conducts its business entirely online. Introduced around 1997 (IBM).

Adomas Svirskas


E-business Systems Evolution

• Proprietary corporate solutions

• EDI – E-business for the big

• Ad-hoc solutions using the Internet

• The XML promise and reality

• The need for E-business standards

• ebXML – the latest focal point of E-business standardisation efforts

Adomas Svirskas


Collaborative Commerce

• Opening-up ERP systems and business application of SMEs

• Integrating them into multi-enterprise collaborative commerce framework

• Interaction between businesses independent on size and geographical location

Adomas Svirskas


It is All about Integration

• The High-Level Goals:– Independence of business operations from

underlying technology– Flexibility– Ease of access for businesses of various size– Cost effectiveness– Investment protection

Adomas Svirskas


Types of Integration (scope)

• With regard to integration scope there are two major classes:– Enterprise Application Integration – EAI

• Typically occurs within an enterprise

• Known as Application-to-Application – A2A

– Business-to-Business Integration – B2Bi• Typically used for inter-enterprise integration

• Known as Extended Enterprise

Adomas Svirskas


Types of Integration (technology)

• Application Tiers– Business Process

– Presentation

– Application

– Database

• Integration Middleware– Component frameworks

• J2EE, .NET, CORBA

– Message Queuing• JMS, MQSeries

– Application Servers

– Web Services

– EDI

– XML Vocabularies

Adomas Svirskas


Business Process Integration

From http://eai.ebizq.net/bpm/aubin_1.html

Commercial Products:

•TIBCO•Vitria•BEA•Sybase•Oracle•...

Adomas Svirskas


E-business Integration Patterns

• Mentioned positioning of Integration types theoretically yields 3D classification matrix

• Not all combinations are equally viable

• Most frequently used proven approaches are referred to as patterns

• IBM did a good job describing E-business patterns http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/patterns

Adomas Svirskas


E-business Integration Patterns

• The document exchange pattern

• The exposed applications pattern

• The exposed business services pattern

• The managed public processes pattern

• The managed public and private processes pattern

Adomas Svirskas


Document Exchange Pattern

Adomas Svirskas


Document Exchange Pattern

• Suited for partners replacing papers by electronic data interchange

• Data formats and communication channels must be agreed by partners

• Tight coupling between external and internal processes

• Typically batched processing – classic EDI

Adomas Svirskas


Exposed Application Pattern

Adomas Svirskas


Exposed Application Pattern

• Application tier exposed directly to the outside world

• Message Queuing or Component Framework as middleware

• Direct coupling among partner applications leads to poor flexibility

Adomas Svirskas


Exposed Business Services Pattern

Adomas Svirskas


Exposed Business Services Pattern

• A layer between the backend enterprise system and partner tier

• This layer exposes an e-business oriented interface

• Business service interface to be agreed by partners

• Web Services technology is an example

Adomas Svirskas


Managed Public Process Pattern

Adomas Svirskas


Managed Public Process Pattern

• Private and Public processes are separated more strictly

• Public processes are identified, analysed and formally described

• Integration occurs at Business Process level

• RosettaNet is an example

• Trading Partner Agreements TPA

Adomas Svirskas


Managed Private/Public Process

Adomas Svirskas


Managed Private/Public Process

• Unified management environment for public and private processes

• An ambitious effort, requires redesigning of internal applications to externalise the business process state and the process flow logic

Adomas Svirskas


Layered E-business Architecture

• Business Modelling Layer

• Integration Layer– Business Integration Layer– Services Integration Layer

• Infrastructure Layer

Adomas Svirskas


ebXML Framework

• A framework of specifications for E-business integration based on state-of-the-art software architecture concepts and on experience in development of E-business systems

• E-business interactions between organizations are modelled, standardised and published via E-business registries

• The use of XML-based, declarative specification languages provides configurability and interoperability

• Architectural separation of business and information technology aspects of e-business systems

Adomas Svirskas


ebXML and Integration Patterns

• ebXML is intended to support managed public processes pattern:– Various middleware types are supported– Focus on E-business application rather

application integration– Declarative definition of public business

processes– Support of partner agreements

Adomas Svirskas


ebXML Modelling Methodology

Adomas Svirskas


ebXML Business Operational ViewThe BOV Addresses:

•The semantics of business data in transactions and associated data interchanges

•The architecture for business

transactions, including: •Operational conventions

•Agreements and arrangements

•Mutual obligations and requirements

Adomas Svirskas


ebXML Functional Services View

The FSV Addresses:

•Functional capabilities

•Business Service Interfaces

•Protocols and Messaging Services

Adomas Svirskas


ebXML Framework cont‘d

• Business Process Specification Schema (BPSS) is an XML-based specification language that formally defines "public" business processes. It focuses on the collaboration of trading partners, and the business transaction activities they perform in the context of those collaborations.

Adomas Svirskas



• Core Components: Those provide the business information that is encoded in business documents that are exchanged between business partners.

• Registry/Repository: This is useful for more than merely conducting business searches. Some business scenarios depend heavily on registries to support setting up business relationships.

Adomas Svirskas



• Collaboration Protocol Profiles (CPP) and Agreements (CPA): These are XML documents that encode a party's e-business capabilities or two parties' e-business agreements, respectively.

• Transport, Routing and Packaging: The ebXML messaging services provide an elegant general-purpose messaging mechanism. The ebXML messaging service is layered over SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and can transport arbitrary types of business content.

Adomas Svirskas


ebXML Business Scenario

Adomas Svirskas


ebXML State of the Art

• Started in November 1999 sponsored by OASIS and UN/CEFACT

• Framework specifications delivered in May 2001

• Steady adoption by commercial vendors, government organisations and Open Source community

Adomas Svirskas


ebXML State of the Art cont‘d

• ebXML in production– www.steel24-7.com

– www.papinet.org

– HL7

• ebXML pilots– Sun Microsystems with Sabre

– Sun Microsystems with GM

– US CDC – www.cdc.org

– British Telecom

Adomas Svirskas


ebXML State of the Art cont‘d

• Not all the parts of the framework are adopted equally

• ebXML Messaging gets most of the attention

• Core Components are of wide interest• Full-scale support of business process

modelling and run-time interpretation is still to come

Adomas Svirskas


Towards Quality of Service

• Integration-level QoS

• Business-level QoS

• Service Level Agreements

• Research directions

Adomas Svirskas


Integration-level QoS

• Collective measure of the level of service a provider delivers to its customers or subscribers– Availability (downtime)– Response time and throughput– Abandoned transactions – Speed of fault detection and correction– ...

Adomas Svirskas


Business-level QoS

• Based on business metrics and profit models– A simple profit model:

Time = W - the response time constraintRevenue = r * (number of completed

transactions) Cost = c * (number of responses longer than W)Profit = Revenue - cost

• Closely related to the integration-level QoS via profit-oriented feedback control

Adomas Svirskas


SLA – Main Aspects

• Legal: Provides for the negotiations between customer and service provider

• Operational: Provides for the execution of the services under the SLA

• Financial: Provides an assessment of the financial implications in the SLA

Adomas Svirskas


Research Directions

• Modelling of inter-relation between the integration-level and business-level QoS

• Monitoring, measurement and management of business processes based on QoS levels

• Instrumenting of the above in ebXML or similar environment

• Implementing in practice

Adomas Svirskas


Related Work

• Integration-level QoS and BP management

• SLA specification language

Adomas Svirskas


Q2B (QoS to Biz) Framework

• Developed by HP Labs, 2001

• Intended to:– Monitor and correlate QoS with business

metrics– Visualise results– Issue alerts according to defined thresholds– Adapt and optimise business processes based

on the

Adomas Svirskas


Q2B (QoS to Biz) Framework

• Key points of importance for us:– SOA based approach – HP e-speak middleware,

similar to Web Services– Conceptual similarity to RBVO – federated e-

services– Non-intrusive interceptor based monitoring– XML-based data exchange

Adomas Svirskas


Q2B - Monitoring of QoS

From HPL-2001-96, HP Laboratories

Adomas Svirskas


SLAng – an SLA Language

• Developed by Department of Computer Science, University College London

• Part of an EU IST project

http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/d.lamanna/tapas.html

Adomas Svirskas


SLAng Goals

• Producing a formal language, with a well defined syntax and semantics for describing service level specifications (SLSs)

• Specification of non functional features (service level) of contracts between independent parties to allow the integration with the functional design of a distributed component system

• Parameterisation, compositionality, validation of service level agreements

Adomas Svirskas


SLAng Positioning

Adomas Svirskas


SLAng - SLA structure

Adomas Svirskas


SLAng - SLA Classification

Adomas Svirskas


SLAng Importance

• Modelling and reasoning about SLAs• Translating an SLA into another format

(XML-based)• Monitoring compliance to SLA• Toolkit for service composition and

analysis (assist ASP in determining what SLSs they can undertake to meet)

Adomas Svirskas


Conclusions

• Significant standardisation effort is being carried out in E-Business area

• Collaborative commerce is supported by promising architectural frameworks

• Quality of Business Services becomes more and more important

• Questions, comments:• Adomas Svirskas [email protected]

• Bob Roberts [email protected]

Architectures and Techniques for modern E-business Systems

Documents

Transcript of Architectures and Techniques for modern E-business Systems