By ASX, I am referring to the Applicability Statements 1-4, which are popular standards for exchanging electronic documents between business partners. Each of ASX standards have been modeled off a popular Internet protocol. The introduction of a new number in the ASX standards is not intended to replace prior versions. Instead, each release AS1, AS2, etc offers features and benefits appropriate for different e-commerce applications. Companies may choose to use both AS2 and AS4, for example, in different scenarios depending upon the security profile, file size and business value of the message.
Applicability Statements #1-4
The four ASX standards introduced to date have enjoyed varying levels of success. Here is a quick recap:
- AS1 – First, there was AS1 based on SMTP. SMTP, of course, is the standard utilized for e-mail exchanges. EDI documents were transmitted between companies using the SMTP protocol. AS1 was the beginning of the revolution. Although it is not used extensively today, AS1 helped to fundamentally change thinking around how the Internet could be used for B2B communications.
- AS2 – Next AS2 was introduced based on the HTTP protocol. AS2 emulated the interactions between a web browser and a web server in order to exchange EDI documents. AS2 was wildly successful. Adoption was catalyzed by Wal-Mart’s announcement to utilize the standard with its supplier community. AS2 remains one of the most widely used protocols for B2B communications today, especially in the US retail sector.
- AS3 – The third in the series was AS3. AS3 was based upon FTP, file transfer protocol. FTP has been a popular standard for exchanging messages between companies for many years. As a result, there were high expectations for how AS3 would change the B2B communications landscape, especially in the area of large file transfer. Unfortunately, AS3 has largely been a failure from my perspective as it has yet to achieve any meaningful adoption.
- AS4 – The most recently released standard is AS4. AS4 is based upon SOAP and the web services model. Although web services have become the de facto paradigm for message exchange for numerous web-based applications, there has been little adoption of SOAP for B2B communications. Early indications suggest that AS4 will enjoy more adoption than AS3. Members of the European aerospace community are piloting the standard today. However, it is unclear whether AS4 will outperform AS2.
AS5
The big question in my mind is what is next? Will there be a subsequent release of the ASX standards, in other words, an AS5. And, if so, what network protocol will AS5 be based upon?
There are a few remaining Internet standards that have not been standardized for B2B communications. A few that initially came to my mind included:
- Telnet – Used primarily in LAN environments to establish a command line interface connection with a remote server.
- Gopher – Named after the University of Minnesota sports mascot, Gopher is an Internet search and retrieval protocol popular before the introduction of web browsers.
- NNTP – Network News Transfer Protocol was a popular standard for reading and posting articles to Usenet groups and news servers throughout the 1990s.
Given the declining popularity of these three protocols, I would suspect that none are an ideal choice for AS5. There are other application layer IP protocols such as DNS, BGP, SNMP, SIP and DHCP, but none of these are designed for the types of transmissions required for B2B e-commerce.
After some thinking I finally came to the conclusion that RSS, Really Simple Syndication, would be the ideal candidate for AS5. In my experience, it rarely works with any level of consistency or reliability. Therefore it would benefit from a standard. Furthermore, there is a growing need to transmit not just structured transactional data but free form text, images, video and audio content between businesses engaged in electronic commerce.
What are the applications of an RSS-based AS5 protocol? Stay tuned for my next post….
