What are the major features and capabilities that have been added or significantly expanded in the ebBP v2.0.X series?

  1. The six business transaction patterns specified by the UN/CEFACT Modeling Methodology (UMM Revision 10, Chapters 8 & 9) for business messaging exchanges have been further articulated. Concrete parameters have more fully defined and operational semantic spelled out. These six patterns could enable the majority of business transactions in eBusiness or other shared collaborations. In addition, an extensible pattern has been specified to enable anticipated industry or partner specific business transactions. This pattern is the Data Exchange pattern.
  2. Enabled the use of hybrid, ebXML or Web Services in the business message exchange. Done by creating an Operational Mapping for the business messages and signals used in the business transaction patterns to abstract operations used in the WSDL message exchange patterns.
  3. Enable an ebBP definition to reference a set of logical Business Documents. Logical business documents can be specified from multiple sources or namespaces. The actual Business Document can be realized by using external specifications to include ebXML CC and Universal Business Language (UBL) Small Business Subset (SBS), http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cs-UBL-1.0-SBS-1.0/universal-business-process-1.0-ebBP Domain specific business documents can also be defined.
  4. Business partners can assume different roles throughout the collaboration. These roles can be attached to the Business Collaboration definition as it is composed so as to understand how the role change enables the business message exchange in a business transaction whether it is binary or has multiple parties. These expanded role binding capabilities support communities such as RosettaNet.
  5. A status visibility function has been provided. This allows third parties to be visible in a business transaction although they do not have a first class role in the business transaction but their activities are important to one of the collaborating (first class) parties.
  6. Use of semantic information to support the capability to take a generic business process and specialize it for a specific use.
  7. Improved linking constructs and transition capabilities to support the process definition as they are composed.