Abstract:
Currently, many organizations are developing their electronic business
systems. The XML (eXtension Markup Language) is a major markup language which
is used worldwide to describe business documents in a structured format, but many
organizations use XML and implement their e-business systems in different ways.
However, there is ongoing work on ebXML (Electronic Business using eXtensible
Markup Language), which is an international standard initiated by OASIS and
UN/CEFACT for conducting electronic business by exchanging e-business documents
via Internet in the form of XML documents. At the moment, many organizations are
interested in implementing ebXML with their e-business systems; however, the
implementation of the system is slow. From this study, it was found that the biggest
obstacle is technology complexity. Therefore, this research developed an
implementation framework including methodology and tool guidelines for
implementing e-business by applying ebXML standard. These guidelines help
implementers start implementing their system more easily.
There are two major components of ebXML applied to the framework. The
first one is the ebXML Repository and Registry, which is a component focusing on
storage and how to access business data. The second is the ebXML Collaborative
Partner Profile (CPP), which is a component focusing on how we can represent the
company profile effectively in standard XML format. With this study’s framework, it
provides ebXML standard registry for every organization to store and access its data
in the same way, so there is no need to implement several applications to support the
different repositories. Moreover, the organizations do not have to create their own
XML vocabularies, since this framework prepares the UBL (Universal Business
Language) international standard vocabularies instead. This allows all the
organizations to talk in the same language. In addition, the framework provides tools
for creating the company profile in CPP format as well. There are several components
applied to the framework; for example, the ebxmlrr is applied as the Registry and
Repository; the RosettaNet is applied as the business processes; and the ebCPP Editor
is applied as the tool for creating a company profile in a CPP format.
The web-based application was developed to evaluate the experiment results.
The application is used to create, update, and search company profiles. In addition, the
web application also provides the tools for performing the text-to-XML and XML-totext
transformation for business documents. The evaluation of the experimental results
indicates that it is feasible to apply the proposed framework to implement e-business
systems. Moreover, the lesson learned from the experiment, which narrates pros and
cons of the tools used in implementation, is also concluded. This lesson is useful and
helps implementers decide whether the tools are suitable for their implementation