XML interoperability standards for seamless communication: An analysis of industry-neutral and domain-specific initiatives
Introduction
In today’s dynamic networked environment, organizations strongly depend on information and communication technologies (ICTs) to exchange information and to support the execution and management of their core activities and cross-organization business processes. Similarly, the success of joint collaborative military operations relays on the exchange of critical information in real-time. As a consequence, ensuring interoperability among heterogeneous and geographically distributed systems has become of utmost importance.
Interoperability, in a broad sense, refers to the use of computer-based tools that facilitate the coordination of work and information flow among heterogeneous distributed communication systems. According to IEEE [1], interoperability represents the capability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and use it. It emerged from the need to harmonize the operational heterogeneous networked environment, real-time information sharing and the necessity to improve task coordination [2].
Enterprise interoperability, integration and networking represent major areas that enable companies to improve communication and collaboration [3]. Different data formats were developed (e.g., EDI, XML) to support information systems’ interoperability. The focus of this article is on business-to-business (B2B) XML-based e-business interoperability standardization initiatives or frameworks,1 simply referred here as XML-based interoperability standards.2 This decision was made because XML is highly adopted by the computer industry and the B2B e-business standards widely used in industry follow XML-based specifications.
XML (Extensible Markup Language, www.w3.org/XML/) was developed by the WWW Consortium (W3C). It represents a meta-language for e-documents management and web publishing and also a data format [21]. Its flexible data format derived from the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML, https://www.iso.org/standard/16387.html) ISO 8879. XML has numerous advantages3,4 compared to other approaches: it supports the validation of a DTD document (i.e., unlike YAML), it is machine readable and also human readable,5 it supports references (XPointer, XPath), allows many views on the one data (i.e., unlike JSON), allows integration on all traditional databases and formats, it is document-oriented, and is widely adopted by the computer industry (i.e., unlike JSON), and XML continues to be the format of choice for API developers (DOM, SAX, XQuery, XPath) – especially in the absence of well-defined standards. The SOAP and XML-RPC protocols rely on XML (i.e., to accept requests, to provide data in their responses).
Numerous XML-based standardization approaches towards seamless interoperability exist: industry-neutral initiatives (such as: ebXML http://www.ebxml.org or RosettaNet www.rosettanet.org), and domain-specific initiatives, such as: HL7 (Health Level Seven http://www.hl7.org) in the healthcare sector, papiNet (www.papinet.org) for the paper and forest products industry, or NATO STANAGs for unmanned aerial vehicles [4].
Despite the variety of reference architectures, frameworks, tools, infrastructures and technologies supporting (or claiming to support) seamless interoperability, the scientific community emphasizes this objective is not yet fully achieved and more work needs to be done [5], [4], [6].
Most articles addressing interoperability in the context of e-business focus on e-business frameworks, e.g., [7], [8], [9], [2], [10], [3] are descriptive in nature. In several cases the actual use in practice of the respective framework is not addressed (e.g., [10]). The coverage of interoperability requirements is not analyzed. Domain-specific standardization initiatives receive little attention [41], although numerous advances were made. In order to attain seamless interoperability in today’s networked economy, when accurate real-time information exchange is crucial for successful businesses, and spans different organizations from different industries, it is important to understand the specificities of each domain specific approach. Recent works, although aiming to review e-business interoperability frameworks [10], did not actually tackle domain-specific interoperability frameworks. Other works focus on a specific case study [11], or implementations following a certain standard specifications, as in: [12], [13]. An up-to-date review or analysis of current advances of domain-specific initiatives for seamless communication is not available, although highly relevant. This article addresses this gap.
The objective of this article is to present an up-to-date review of the most relevant XML-based e-business industry-neutral and domain-specific standardization initiatives aiming at achieving seamless interoperability, discussing their commonalities and differences, and highlighting directions for further research and development work. By performing this analysis, this article has two main contributions. First, it provides an up-to-date review of the most relevant industry-neutral and domain-specific standardization initiatives towards seamless interoperability among communication systems. Second, by comparing these initiatives, a set of recommendations is advanced towards improving further interoperability developments, offering a unique niche for researchers, practitioners and developers to make significant contributions.
This article is organized as follows. The following section discusses related work. Section 3 briefly introduces relevant aspects on interoperability. Main standardization initiatives are presented next. Section 5 contains a comparative analysis and discussion of the results. The article concludes with a section addressing the need for further research.
Section snippets
Related work
Related research efforts were analyzed. A brief overview of the most relevant works is presented in this section.
A comparative analysis of five business-to-business frameworks (eCo, BizTalk, OBI, cXML, RosettaNet) concerning security, communication protocols, service discovery, repositories, message format, query mechanism, scalability and ontology aspects is presented in [14]. A special focus, however, is on security issues related to enterprise business transactions over the Internet. An
Background
Interoperability reflects the capability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and use in a heterogeneous network the information that was exchanged [25]. In the military domain, interoperability refers to the ability of different military organizations to conduct joint operations, allowing forces, units or systems to operate together [26]. Interoperability solutions enable ICT systems to facilitate information exchange and promote service compatibility between systems
Standardization bodies and initiatives
Numerous standardization bodies and consortia exist, promoting industry-neutral or industry-specific interoperability standardization initiatives. Consortia are usually alliances of convenience where different organizations (e.g., vendors, developers) team up to solve specific problems and share best practices. Very often consortia have enough critical mass behind an emerging standard, promoting its adoption. The most relevant standardization bodies and initiatives are briefly referred below,
Comparative analysis and discussion
Table 2, Table 3 contain an overview of the main characteristics of the industry-neutral initiatives (Table 2) and domain-specific standardization initiatives (Table 3) illustrating the promoting organization, aim of the initiative, and the main elements of the framework/standard.
As reflected in Table 2, most industry-neutral standardization initiatives are quite mature initiatives. ebXML and RosettaNet provide detailed specifications for the messaging service and business processes. In
Conclusions and directions for future work
This paper presents an overview and analysis of relevant industry-neutral and industry-specific standardization initiatives. The comparative analysis performed showed that all the industry-specific initiatives analyzed tackle technical and knowledge/information interoperability. Semantic interoperability is ensured by a common set of business documents (e.g., TexWeave) or by a common dictionary/glossary (e.g., PIDX, AgXML). ebXML and RosettaNet, as industry-neutral approaches for seamless
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions for improvement that allowed to enhance this article.
Claudia-Melania Chituc is an assistant professor at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), The Netherlands. Prior to joining the TU/e, she was an assistant professor at the Informatics Engineering Department of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (UPorto), Portugal, where she was the PI for UPorto for the ENSURE FP7 project. She holds a PhD and a MSc in Computers and Electrical Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Portugal, and two
References (52)
- et al.
Interoperability in collaborative networks: independent and industry-specific initiatives—the case of the footwear industry
Comput. Ind.
(2008) - et al.
Knowledge engineering for enterprise integration: interoperability and networking: theory and applications
Data Knowl. Eng.
(2016) - et al.
New perspectives for the future interoperable systems
Comput. Ind.
(2016) - et al.
XML-based e-business frameworks and standardization
Comput. Stand. Interfaces
(2006) - et al.
A review of e-business interoperability frameworks
J. Syst. Softw.
(2014) - et al.
An empirical framework for evaluating interoper-ability of data exchange standards based on their actual usage: a case study on XLIFF
Comput. Stand. Interfaces
(2015) - et al.
Integrating HL7 RIM and ontology for unified knowledge and data representation in clinical decision support systems
Comput. Methods Progr. Biomed.
(2016) - et al.
Lessons learned from the implementation of remote control for the interoperability standard ISO/IEEE 11073–20601 in a standard weighing scale
Comput. Methods Progr. Biomed.
(2016) - et al.
A comparison on B2B e-service solutions
Commun. ACM
(2003) EDI, XML and e-business frameworks: a survey
Comput. Ind.
(2008)
Adoption of e-business functions and migration from EDI-based to XML-based e-business frameworks in supply chain integration
Int. J. Prod. Econ.
An evaluation and selection framework for interoperability standards
Inf. Softw. Technol.
Business to business interoperability: a current review of XML data integration standards
Comput. Stand. Interfaces
An approach for testing interoperability and robustness of real-time embedded software
J. Syst. Softw.
Architectures for enterprise integration and interoperability: past, present and future
Comput. Ind.
The join/leave/remain decision in collaborative networked organizations
Comput. Ind. Eng.
An empirical investigation of information systems interoperability business value in European firms
Comput. Ind.
A framework proposal for seamless interoperability in a collaborative networked environment
Comput. Ind.
IEEE Standard Computer Dictionary: A Compilation of IEEE Standard Computer Glossaries
The biggest issue: interoperability vs. integration
eAI J.
XML and industrial standards for electronic commerce
Knowl. Inf. Syst.
A review of XML-based supply-chain integration
Prod. Plann. Control
Business-to-business e-commerce frameworks
IEEE Comput.
XML-based frameworks for internet commerce
A survey and comparison of business-to-business e-commerce frameworks
ACM SIGecom Exch.
Cited by (16)
Automated generation of digital twin for a built environment using scan and object detection as input for production planning
2023, Journal of Industrial Information IntegrationInformation sharing in supply chains – Interoperability in an era of circular economy
2022, Cleaner Logistics and Supply ChainCitation Excerpt :In addition to the direct causality between SC data integration and Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM), the relationship has also been shown as indirect, and it is mediated by SC coordination and support (Gupta et al., 2019). Various data standards in the data sharing have been conceived while keeping sustainability in mind which include eBIS-XML (electronic Business Interchange Standard in XML) (Chituc, 2017), XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language), RosettaNet (Xu et al., 2018) among others. A detailed description of these standards is presented in the Appendix B.
Facilitating conditions for successful adoption of inter-organizational information systems in seaports
2019, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and PracticeCitation Excerpt :Lastly, the main conclusions of this study, including recommendations for future developments, are provided in Section 5. With the emergence of technologies as well as domain-specific standardization initiatives, ports and the maritime industry have new opportunities to increase the productivity and efficiency of their operations (Chituc, 2017; Heilig et al., 2017a). This section is structured as follows.
Adapting an agile manufacturing concept to the reference architecture model industry 4.0: A survey and case study
2019, Journal of Industrial Information IntegrationCitation Excerpt :In the area of enterprise architecture and enterprise application integration, much work on similar topics has already been done before Industry 4.0 related to platforms for eCommerce. These works could be categorized to web services-based approaches [62,63] and various competing XML schema-based standards such as universal business language (UBL), Open Applications Group Integration Specification (OAGIS), eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), XML Common Business Library (xCBL) and commerce eXtensible Markup Language (cXML) [64–71]. Only a minority of work in EA and EI explicitly mention Industry 4.0. [72–74]
Digitalized Cross-organizational Interoperability in Industrial Business Ecosystems: Implications and Models for Process Industry
2022, IN4PL - Proceedings of the International Conference on Innovative Intelligent Industrial Production and Logistics
Claudia-Melania Chituc is an assistant professor at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), The Netherlands. Prior to joining the TU/e, she was an assistant professor at the Informatics Engineering Department of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (UPorto), Portugal, where she was the PI for UPorto for the ENSURE FP7 project. She holds a PhD and a MSc in Computers and Electrical Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Portugal, and two licentiate degrees she pursued simultaneously at two different universities: in computer science and engineering (from Politehnica University of Bucharest, Romania) and in economics -being specialized in finances, insurances, banks and stock exchange (from the Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest, Romania).