Description
Today, the CBDI Forum released an analysis which details how Web services co-exist and complement the UN/CEFACT Business Collaboration Framework (BCF). The report highlights that a "clear convergence path to Web Services has emerged which we (CBDI) believe will add a universal appeal to the framework." In the article, CBDI excerpted content from the UN/CEFACT BCF Asia tour content site , including the Web Service Stack (slide 90), which includes a reference to BPEL. The CBDI article also includes CEFACT's mapping of the BCF to the Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture (slides 98 & 100), and the BCF Road Map (slide 92) . The CBDI article compellingly presents the inevitability of Web services infrastructure in support of business process & collaboration. BPEL is clearly part of this infrastructure.
Abstract of Report:
"ROADMAP REPORT - UN/CEFACT MOVE INTO ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE SPACE - Last month, UN/CEFACT, the main sponsor of B2B standards such as EDI and ebXML, announced a new enterprise architecture, which not only adds support for Web Services standards but also cleanly separates transport and messaging layers from business syntax and semantics.
In the past ebXML was seen as a competing standard to Web Services; the new framework combines the important work the UN has placed in the public domain defining business process and schema and plugs in appropriate transport, service description and discovery standards such as SOAP, WSDL and UDDI. Existing users of ebXML or EDI standards are fully supported in the new framework but a clear convergence path to Web Services has emerged which we believe will add a universal appeal to the framework."
One of CBDI's summarizing comments is that "The clean mapping of the BCF to Web Services means that companies can move forward using Web Services confident that the international e-business frameworks being developed by UN/CEFACT will become a natural extension of their SOA". The article prominently features both BPEL and UDDI (OASIS TCs).
