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Assured delivery for B2B Web services: point-to-point use pattern


In this use pattern, a manufacturer sells its products through a network of affiliated dealerships. This manufacturer has initiated a pilot project to improve the IT integration between its own retail organization and half a dozen of the largest, most important dealerships.

 

The existing technical solution

Historically, business-to-business "e-commerce" has been conducted using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). EDI is a set of standards for the content and formatting of business-to-business messages. For examples of these standards and messages, see the United Nations Directories for Electronic Data Interchange.

If the identities of communication partners are known and unchanging, the use of industry standard message definitions is not strictly necessary. Although other XML-based standards are available for conducting business-to-business e-commerce (such as the OASIS Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup Language (ebXML) specifications) the manufacturer has decided to investigate the use of Web services technologies, and is using WSDL documents from a variety of sources to define the service interfaces.

The interactions between the manufacturer and its dealers for the initial pilot project fall into two categories:

The manufacturer uses WAS to implement requests for information using SOAP over HTTP and SOAP over JMS. Dealers are free to choose their own implementation technology; they do not have to use WAS.

The manufacturer implements requests for update in two different ways:

The messages are transmitted over Virtual Private Networks, to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of messages transmitted between the two businesses, and as a part of establishing the identity of the sender.

 

The business problem

Although both the manufacturer and its dealers are happy with the implementation of the request for information services, there are a number of issues in the request for update case:

 

The solution using WS-ReliableMessaging

With WS-ReliableMessaging support in WAS, the manufacturer can replace their existing custom-retry solutions for reliable one-way messaging with standard SOAP over HTTP one-way messaging. The removal of the retry logic from the application simplifies the application code, enabling simpler and quicker application development.

With WS-ReliableMessaging, the dealer and manufacturer do not have to be connected in order for the message to be sent.

The WS-ReliableMessaging standard adds reliability to SOAP over HTTP messaging, reducing the need to use SOAP over JMS.

Because WS-ReliableMessaging with SOAP over HTTP is an interoperable standard, the network of dealers need not use a common software platform.



 

Related concepts


Assured delivery for B2B Web services: hub-and-spoke use pattern
Interoperation with other WS-ReliableMessaging providers: use pattern
Use patterns for WS-ReliableMessaging

 

Related tasks


Building a reliable Web service application
Detecting and fixing problems with WS-ReliableMessaging