UMM - Consistent B2B Analysis & Design on Top of ebXML and Web Services

Christian Huemer

UN/CEFACT TMG Vice Chair, University of Vienna, Austria

Description

This tutorial focuses on inter-organizational systems used in B2B. By introducing the limitations of traditional EDI and business document centric approaches, we motivate a business process centric approach for B2B. Furthermore, we suggest a model driven approach for B2B. It is based on a technology neutral approach to describe the business semantics of a business collaboration. The resulting business collaboration models must then be mapped to the implementation technology of choice.

UN/CEFACT has developed a methodology called UMM in order to develop unambiguous business collaboration models. The tutorial will guide through the 4 main process steps of UMM. The audience will learn how to create UMM compliant business collaboration models that follow the UML profile of UMM. These models must than be mapped to the IT layer. Today, ebXML and Web Services are the most promising technologies to implement B2B. Thus, we demonstrate how to represent the business semantics captured by a UMM model in ebXML and Web Services specifications. As a side effect the tutorial gives a good comparison of ebXML and Web Services.

A more detailed describtion of the tutorial can be found at: http://www.ifs.univie.ac.at/~ch/UMM-Tutorial-EEE-05.pdf

Outline:

  • B2B e-Commerce
    • Introduction: From EDI to Service-oriented Architecture
    • Why a data-centric approach must fail
    • Motivation for a business process-oriented approach
  • UN/CEFACT's Modelling Methodology (UMM)
    • Business Domain View
    • Business Requirements View
    • Business Transaction View
    • Business Service View
  • ebXML
    • A brief Introduction to ebXML
    • From a UMM model to Core Components (CC)
    • From CC to an XML document type
    • From a UMM model to the Business Process Specification Schema (BPSS)
    • From a UMM model to Collaboration Protocol Profiles (CPP)
    • ebXML Messaging to support a UMM model
  • Web Services
    • A brief Introduction to Web Services
    • Deriving WSDL operations from a UMM model
    • From a UMM model to WS-CDL
    • From a UMM model to BPEL
    • SOAP header requirements from UMM models
  • Wrap-up
Target Audiences

Everyone who is interested in connecting business applications of different business partners. The tutorial presents arguments on the strategic level for managers as well as a how-to-do guide for the engineers. A basic understanding of service-oriented concepts is of advantage, but not a must.

References

About the Speaker

Christian Huemer is Associate Professor at the University of Vienna, Austria. There he is part of the new Department of Distributed and Multimedia Systems. In 1997 he received a doctors degree from the University of Vienna. In 2002 the University of Vienna conferred the Venia Docendi in business informatics on Christian Huemer.

Areas of interest: His research interests are the analysis and design of information systems. In particular he is interested in information systems supporting ecommerce. He is working in that area since 1994, a long time before the ecommerce hype. Today his work concentrates on methodologies for modelling e-business transactions as well as meta data support for electronic business and EDI environments.

E-Business standardization: activities Since 1997 Christian Huemer is engaged in the e-business standardization. At that time he joined the Techniques and Methodologies Group (TMG) of CEFACT. This was the time when the work on UMM started. In 1998 he became TMG’s secretary and since 2001 he serving as Vice Chair of TMG. Christian Huemer was part of TMG’s sub-team that created the idea of ebXML. He participated in the ebXML business process team in the 18-month initiative and was the host of the final ebXML meeting in Vienna in May 2001. As a TMG Vice Chair he is responsible for the ebXML specifications maintained by UN/CEFACT, which are Core Components and BPSS. Currently, he also leads - on a provisional basis - the UMM project.

Research projects: Christian Huemer participated in a number of international and national projects. Currently, he is involved in two european projects called EUDIN (European data interchange for waste movements) and Gilda (multi-modal transport chains from southern to central Europe). Both of the projects use UMM and ebXML. Experienced gained in this projects will be part of the tutorial.

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