The Inventory Visibility Test Framework (IVTF) team, from the Inventory Visibility and Interoperability (IV&I) pilot project sponsored by AIAG (Automotive Industry Action Group), reported at Autotech-07 on its recent achievements in using SOAP-based protocols and OAGIS XML documents for an inventory MinMax scenario involving several parties. Among the team participants, Fujitsu and Axway have demonstrated a MinMax exchange using message handlers implementing the recent ebXML Messaging Service V3 (ebMS V3) specification.
Among the features demonstrated, new in V3 :

• Message pulling for light partners without static IP addresses or with limited connectivity,
• The ability for an ebMS V3 gateway to interact with internally-deployed Web services,
  allowing remote partners to focus on business payloads while ignoring
  interface definition details. The accessed inventory Web services were hosted by Ford and
  Sun Microsystems.

In the past, ebMS V2 had been successfully deployed in the Automotive industry(GeneralMotors, Volkswagen), and has been profiled for automotive retail (STAR) in US.
Version 3 of ebMS will make it easier to integrate in SOA environments, while supporting messaging functions originally found in M.O.Ms for accommodating diverse messaging styles and scalability requirements. An excerpt of the presentation made can be found at

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/documents.php?wg_abbrev=ebxml-msg

• “AIAG is supportive of ebMS3 because it enables trading partners to pull for incoming messages, which is very beneficial for smaller trading partners that do not have static Internet IP addresses or do not  want to keep their systems turned on all the time. Automotive has invested in both ebMS and Web Services capabilities; ebMS3 should facilitate interoperable data exchange using both transport mechanisms.“
  Said Pat Snack, GM Executive Loan AIAG