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Enable real-world trading partner collaborations in SOA

An introduction to the ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement standard

By Leo Fernandez, Ash Parikh and Varun Gupta, JavaWorld.com, 08/14/06

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What are the relevant standards bodies pertaining to the CPPA standard?

The OASIS ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement Technical Committee is the author of the OASIS ebXML CPPA specification, one of the technical specifications of the OASIS ebXML suite of standards, a standardization effort lead by UN/CEFACT (United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business) and OASIS.

What is the status and industry adoption of the CPPA standard?

In December 2002, ebXML CPPA Version 2.0 was ratified and approved as an OASIS open standard. There is also an Editor's Draft dated April 2005 for maintenance purposes.

Though ebXML is an extremely powerful approach, it has been relatively slow to attract wide industry adoption. In our opinion, organizations are still waiting for others to take the risk of trying emerging technologies. The project's strongest support comes from Sun Microsystems. While it is an important member of the OASIS standards body, IBM has been somewhat noncommittal; and Microsoft does not even support the ebXML initiative.

What is CPP?

Collaboration Protocol Profile (CPP) defines the technical information about the interfaces, business capabilities, security constraints, messaging, and transport protocols the trading partner uses to do e-business. All trading partners register their CPP documents in an ebXML registry or similar repository so that other trading partners can discover them and understand the supported process. A trading partner can be represented by multiple CPP documents.

In a CPP, the ProcessSpecification, DeliveryChannel, DocExchange, and Transport elements define how a trading partner's business unit can be processed. The ProcessSpecification element specifies the trading partners who can send requests to each other and the order of the requests. As shown in Figure 1, the DeliveryChannel element specifies a trading partner's messaging capabilities. A trading partner can define any number of messaging characteristics supported in the CPP. The DocExchange element defines how a business document is processed, which includes encryption, digital signature, and reliable messaging. The Transport element defines the transport protocols to be used while sending business documents, the endpoint addresses, and other properties relating to the transport protocol used.

These pieces of information take into account, for example, the correct HTTPS port to access a company's ERP (enterprise resource planning) system, the document standard used to exchange business information, and the sequence in which the business documents should be exchanged.

Figure 1. The XML elements in a Collaboration Protocol Profile. Click on thumbnail to view full-sized image.

In this article, we provide only a brief overview of the CPP's key elements, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Key elements

<CollaborationProtocolProfile> The root element of the CPP XML document.
<PartyInfo> Defines all the details about the trading partner.
<PartyId> Defines a logical identifier for the organization, such as D-U-N-S code or any industry-specific identifier.
<PartyRef> Defines a URL that provides additional information about the organization, which may point to a UDDI or ebXML registry.
<CollaborationRole> Defines a specific role for the trading partner in an e-business process, which is derived from a BPSS (Business Process Specification Schema) XML document.
<Certificate> Defines the digital certificate such as an X.509 certificate used by e-business trading partners to authenticate the user who sends the message. More than one Certificate element can be used for various security functions in the CPP.
<SecurityDetails> Defines a TrustAnchors element, which contains the AnchorCertificateRef element that refers to the Certificate element. Security elements can be used for various security functions in the CPP.
<DeliveryChannel> Defines the transport and message protocols supported by the trading partner.
<Transport> Defines details of the messaging transport protocol such as type version and endpoint.
<DocExchange> Defines the signature or encryption protocol that trading partners must agree on for exchange of business documents.
<OverrideMshActionBinding>  
<SimplePart>  
<Packaging> Defines how the message header and payload data are packaged for transmission, taking care of document-level security constraints.
<Signature> Defines the Signature element, which is used for signing the CPP, conforming to the XML Digital Signature specification (XMLDSIG).
<Comment> Defines a textual note from the CPP author.


What is CPA?

The Collaboration Protocol Agreement (CPA) defines the system-level agreement for data interchange between trading partners. It narrows down a subset from what both trading partners can support to what both trading partners will actually support in the exchange. The CPA acts as a service-level agreement that, once agreed upon by both parties, can be then enforced by the ebXML system on both ends of the communication bridge.

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