Are signals meaningful in case syncReplyMode is not set to none?

Whether response for a business process is to be returned synchronously is specified in the CPA rather than in the business process specification itself. This may lead to inconsistent specifications that can be rather meaningless.

Consider the case of a business process that calls for the use of both receipt acknowledgement and acceptance acknowledgement for the request activity. Let's say their corresponding timeouts are 5 minutes and 10 minutes, and the time to perform is 30 minutes. Now suppose the CPA specifies syncReplyMode = signalsAndResponse, does it mean that both the signals and the response have to be returned within 5 minutes? If not, isn't the requesting party supposed to consider the transaction null and void due to not getting the receipt acknowledgement in time?

If the purpose of the receipt acknowledgement is to indicate that the request message has passed the intelligible check, and the purpose of the acceptance acknowledgement is to indicate that the request message has passed additional business rules validation, there isn't much of a point to return these signals along with the response synchronously (being packaged into the same ebXML message). The fact that the response is returned implies that both forms of validation have passed. Batching these signals with the response essentially make them redundant and worthless.

Among RosettaNet PIPs, 2A9 (Query Electronic Components Technical Information) is the only one that allows both synchronous and asynchronous response. In the case of synchronous response, time to perform is 5 minutes. For asynchronous response, time to perform is 24 hours. It does not seem possible to model PIP 2A9 using BPSS and CPP/A as a single business process specification. Only a single time to perform can be specified at the BPSS level. There is no mechanism at the CPP/A level to override the time to perform parameter.

In fact, I think it will be useful if time to acknowledge receipt, time to acknowledge acceptance, and time to perform for a business process specification can all be overridden at the CPP/A level to suit the performance requirements between the two trading partners.

ebxml-cppa message