XML e-commerce standard expected in March

The United Nations CEFACT and the Organization for the Advancement of Structural Information Standards (OASIS) today announced that they will be ready to deliver the Electronic Business XML trading standard this coming March. It was originally slated for release next summer.
The ebXML standard will establish transport, routing and trading-partner protocols for businesses looking to trade with other businesses on the Internet.
OASIS President Bill Smith, who also serves as the engineering manager for Sun Microsystems Inc.'s XML center, said he views ebXML as a necessary step in bringing small and medium-size companies into business-to-business networks.
"It's bringing the benefits of [the electronic data interchange standard] over the Web," Smith said.
Smith said ebXML would complement rather than replace EDI - still the most popular business data exchange format, according to Giga Information Group Inc. analyst Ken Vollmer.
EbXML is designed to provide a simple way for companies to find one another and conduct business over the Web, allowing those with different platforms to speak a common language.
Smith estimated that global adoption of the ebXML standard will take a year. He said he believes that UN/CEFACT's backing of ebXML will help speed the adoption. That organization was also instrumental in creating and promoting EDIFACT, an international standard for EDI.
IBM has been among the numerous companies supporting the new standard. IBM Technological Evangelist Steve Holbrook said his company's next line of Websphere business products will come out next year with full support for ebXML.
Other emerging standards in the next IBM Websphere line include: Universal Description Discovery Integration (UDDI), which will create a global phone-book-like registry for business-to-business commerce, and Web Services Description Language, which will let businesses describe themselves and the platforms on which they operate inside a UDDI directory.
"We hope this becomes as ubiquitous as a [domain name system] server," Holbrook said. "HTTP and HTML are what made the Web take off. We think these new standards will make online B2B commerce take off."
Vollmer remained skeptical that any one new standard will revolutionize the business world, noting that it will be cost-prohibitive for established companies to scuttle their existing infrastructure.
"It will be an enhancement, not a replacement," he said.
He also said translation software is blurring the lines between EDI and the variant forms of XML.