1. © 2002 IBM Corporation IBM Software Group IBM | 2004 © 2004 IBM Corporation BI-ICS Business Integration - Information Conformance Statements And the evolution toward raising the “vertical.org” standards bar Scott Hinkelman, Senior Software Engineer Software Group / Emerging Technologies srh@us.ibm.com

2. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 2 What is BI-ICS Business Integration – Information Conformance Statements (“ICS”) An initial component of the evolution of infrastructure standards toward the business layers

3. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 3 What is the Evolution  Continued focus on interaction specifications and standards  Increases the focus on business-level issues Web services (WS-*) is successful enterprise infrastructure: secure, reliable, transactional But not business oriented  “crawling up the stack” off of the infrastructure  Help close the gap between infrastructure and vertical content  Motivated from the perspective of vertical XML industry consortiums

4. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 4 Current Web Services Infrastructure Stack Service Composition Transports Messaging Description/ Discovery Quality of Experience (QoX) HTTP/HTTPS SMTP RMI / IIOP WSDL SOAP WS-Addressing WS-Renewable References WS-Metadata Exchange WS-Policy WS-Service Group WS-Resource Properties JMS WS-Security WS-Reliable MessagingWS-Transaction WS-Resource Lifetime WS-Base Faults WS-Notification BPEL4WS UDDI WSRP

5. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 5 Evolution Principals 1.Focused, composable specifications Consistent with the WS-* approach Facilitate re-use and incremental adoption Avoid lengthy monolithic unapproachable specifications 2.Vertical industry agnostic Focus on cross-industry pain points 3.No industry content Not defining a purchase order, address, travel information, etc 4.Consistent with WS-* Specifications to show a “WS-* binding” Not dependent on WS-* technology Consistent with desire of typical verticals to remain infrastructure agnostic

6. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 6 Evolution Target Space Vertical-specific Content Service Composition Transports Messaging Description/ Discovery Quality of Experience (QoX) HTTP/HTTPS SMTP RMI / IIOP WSDL SOAP WS-Addressing WS-Renewable References WS-Metadata Exchange WS-Policy WS-Service Group WS-Resource Properties JMS WS-Security WS-Reliable Messaging WS-Transaction WS-Resource Lifetime WS-Base Faults WS-Notification BPEL4WS [TARGET] BI-ICS Common Industry Content Industry-specific Content Infrastructure Busines s UDDI WSRP

7. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 7 Key Approach Points  Important to partner with business-level companies, ISVs, and industry vertical organizations to promote specification/standards  XML centric Consistent with “vertical.org’s” Cognizant of the emerging OMG MDA work

8. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 8 Key Evolution Spaces Business Interoperability Business Usage Discipline Business Payload Composition Business Contracts BI-ICS

9. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 9 About BI-ICS  The initial step of the evolution  A specification - XML vocabulary for a statement about information conformance “Information is stated to be conformant with this type system” XML Schema type system, MIME type, some other type system “Information is stated to be conformant with a process” A Schematron schema process, some other process  Extensible Conformance Model Sequence: example-> this schema, then this schema. Or this schema then this transform, etc.  Extensible vocabulary Any emerging constraint mechanism  Businesses exchange all kinds of information, not just XML BI-ICS facilitates declaring conformance for all kinds of information  Simple, powerful  Java implementation proof of concept

10. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 10 BI-ICS – Use Any Mechanism to Declare your Constraints XSD type system BI-ICS provides declaring information constraints using pervasive mechanisms or whatever emerges MIME type system Schematron assertions (Whatever mechanism) BI-ICS

11. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 11 BI-ICS Motivation >The wide-spread issues with business level interoperability within industry-level XML standards consortiums Addresses common issues facing many industry-level XML consortiums (optional fields, etc) The opportunity to increase interoperability at the business level for consortium members

12. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 12 BI-ICS Example 1 This Conformance statement…… jpg images are ok for processing. image/jpg gif images are ok fro processing. image/gif “The information is considered conformant if of type jpg or gif”

13. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 13 BI-ICS Example 2 This Conformance statement ….> This schema is an industry standard./member.xsd This schema is a modified schema…../member_EducationRequired.xsd “The information is considered conformant if of the industry standard schema type and then also my further constrained schema type”

14. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 14 BI-ICS Example 3 This Conformance statement …. This schema is an industry standard with minimum constraints defined../member.xsd This Schematron schema defines assertions for further constraints./educationrequiredassertion.xml “The information is considered conformant if of the industry standard schema type and then also my Schematron assertions”

15. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 15 What is the Industry Value  Elimination of conformance checking in application logic Facilitates comprehensive runtime checking of information in application servers prior to application logic handoff  Facilitates an On Demand business A business can declare/advertise comprehensive information constraints for conducting B2B business - based on profiled industry-level content standards

16. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 16 IBM’s BI-ICS4J on AlphaWorks  BI-ICS4J implementation contains A ‘Conformance Engine’ that interprets the conformance statement and calls appropriate ‘Conformance Enforcer’ objects A ‘Manipulator’ for building/editing an ICS and checking conformance  Examples Based on Physician Profile standard from MedBiquitous.org Almost all content in XML Schema xsd is optional Example: at least 1 EducationInfo element is required This is optional in the MedBiquitous standard Schema Examples have 2 BI-ICS Conformance Statements to support this requirement By using 2 XML Schemas MedBiquitous standard schema, and a further restricted version of it By using 1 XML Schema and 1 XSL Transform (via Schematron) MedBiquitous standard schema, and a Schematron assertion rule

17. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 17 BI-ICS4J….  It is a proof of concept for the BI-ICS specification  Builds on Xerces Xalan JAXB Schematron XSLT reference implementation  Function, not performance  Shows how the BI-ICS specification is useful in industry

18. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 18 Conformance Engine //establish a Conformance Engine ConformanceEngine ce= new ConformanceEngine(); //check informance conformance. ConformanceResult cr= ce.enforceStatement(ICS, businessinfo); //Note: typical use is through the engine’s stream interface //Check if information is conformant if(cr.getResult()==ConformanceResult.RESULT_YES){ //info is conformant } if(cr.getResult()==ConformanceResult.RESULT_NO){ //info is not conformant } if(cr.getResult()==ConformanceResult.RESULT_UNKNOWN){ //info conformance not known }

19. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 19 Visual Manipulator

20. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 20 Visual Manipulator….

21. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 21 Visual Manipulator….

22. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 22 BI-ICS Plans  Published spec/article/proof-of-concept on IBM DeveloperWorks / AlphaWorks January 04  Currently soliciting feedback from industry-level.org’s and member companies Is this useful? Feedback  A spec update likely Potentially with interested parties Interested in evolving the spec?  Would you actively support a standardization process to finalize BI-ICS?

23. © 2004 IBM Corporation IBM | 2004 23 Introduction Article http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-biics/ BI-ICS Spec ftp://www6.software.ibm.com/software/developer/library/x-biics/BI- ICSSpec_v1.html IBM AlphaWorks implementation http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/biics4j Links