I’d be interested in comments anyone might have comparing
UBL with xCBL 4.0, which I understand to have been “conformed”
to UBL from earlier versions of xCBL. (Of course, this list won’t
need reminding that xCBL was the original basis for UBL), and the pros and cons
of each.
The context for this is that I’m interested to
identify communities of application users have support for one or other XML
standard “out of the box”. Ariba’s cXML standard has a
fair amount of traction out there – but has various IP disadvantages.
My particular focus here is SAP – which had a historical relationship
with CommerceOne, originator of xCBL (via Veo Systems). I’m working
this through various folks I know at SAP – but would welcome any
additional pointers. In particular, I was interested to note that
AT&T’s supplier facing website includes a document that talks about
their support of xCBL 3.0 and 4.0 http://www.attsuppliers.com/downloads.asp
I’m guessing that AT&T’s support of this standard
comes via some software/mapping component running on their SAP XI
infrastructure – perhaps provided by SAP itself. For UBL (or any
other XML standard) to become widely adopted by corporates, I suspect its
availability (and *very* easy activation with trading partners) would be
a requirement. While SAP has been quite engaged with UBL and other
standards historically, I’m not aware of any one standard being favored
in its “shrink wrap” availability. If anyone is aware of packages
that are “ready-to-run” on SAP XI (with hooks to standard procurement
/ AP processes) for UBL, xCBL or other standards, open source or otherwise, I’d
be interested to hear about it.
Incidentally – Oracle seems well ahead of SAP here (an
observation I’ve shared with my SAP contacts). Certain of their
applications seem to support OAGXML natively, and cXML via a standard mapping
service – details of the implementation make it *extremely easy*
to connect SMB suppliers. Can discuss more offline if anyone’s
interested.
Regards,
Roger Bass
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||