By Rachel Chalmers
CommerceNet has released its eCo Interoperability Framework Specification, designed for building bridges between proprietary e-commerce systems. The Framework has two components: an Architecture that lets businesses describe themselves and their commerce services; and Semantic Recommendations that describe best practices for developing XML-based e-commerce documents. It is not intended to compete with BizTalk, XML EDI, RosettaNet, OBI or any other e-commerce transaction protocol or business semantic languages. Dave Hollander, director of interoperability for CommerceNet and co-author of the XML Spec for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), explains that the eCo Framework is a series of ten XML document type definitions (DTDs) which merchants can use in order to simplify resource discovery.
It works rather like the Yellow Pages. Web merchants can use eCo to create rich metadata for the benefit of shopping search engines. Those search engines can use the same specification to make sense of the XML documents they crawl. Users can search for a particular product by region or payment type or vendor or any other defined field. As well as noting the systems and protocols they use, vendors can specify their security models and their terms and conditions of use – so eBay, for example, could easily prohibit deep linking.
This resource discovery trick is something the other e-commerce frameworks haven’t attempted, so eCo should be especially useful for merchants who are seeking to fill in the gaps. It works with procurement standards like Open Buying on the Internet (OBI) and the Open Applications Group (OAG) and with payment systems like Microsoft’s new Passport and other ECML-enabled wallets. What it really tries to do is create a framework so computers can find out terms and conditions and capabilities, Hollander explains. It’s not in CommerceNet’s interests to reinvent any wheels.
