Open Electronic Trading System
by Aarno Lehtola, Tor Lillqvist, Kari Kekki and Seija Hakkarainen
Computerised trading systems range from simple consumer oriented
shopping systems to ones implementing complicated multiphase negotiation
protocols for business-to-business commerce. The Open Electronic Trading
(OET) system addresses the needs of the latter category combining workflow
techniques to inter-organisational EDIFACT messaging.
The OET system is developed for European wide public procurement markets
rising annually to 800 billion ECUs with 10 million buyer and 16 million
provider organisation units. Currently, trading involves an enormous amount
of administrative work, and order handling costs are estimated to be 5
to 10 % of the overall expenses. The OET system computerises trading processes
and helps in saving in the handling costs. It is based on open standards
and supports multiple operating environments. Multilinguality is one of
its features. The OET system is being developed by Tieto Group and VTT
Information Technology in the TAPPE project of the EC.
The area of public procurement in Europe is today still suffering from
minimal international competition, inadequate administrative systems for
users, inadequate availability and use of product specifications, and minimal
use of information and communication technology at regional, national and
European level.
The aim of the TAPPE project (project AD1015 of the Telematics Applications
Programme of the EC) is to support the building of a common European infrastructure
for public procurement by introducing software solutions to exchange all
the needed information electronically between the co-operating business
partners, to make the purchasing procedures more streamlined, to open the
markets over regional and national borders, and to constrain user organisations
to follow agreed rules and regulations.
The results of TAPPE will cover all the main phases of the total procurement
process. It will produce the following software and telecommunication applications:
- decision support tool to help users manage procurement regulations
and procedures
- decision support tool to evaluate suppliers and bids
- data interchange application for announcing and tendering
- computerised contract handling system
- open electronic trading system
- application to manage and monitor procurement related work flow processes.
Tieto Group and VTT Information Technology are developing Open Electronic
Trading (OET) system as a part of the TAPPE project. It handles the different
stages within a given trade transaction in a situation where the seller
and the buyer already have identified each other, and have a common, contract
based business relationship. The main technical features of the OET system
are outlined in the following.
Architecture
Within organisational boundaries the OET system applies the intranet
paradigm and the HTTP protocol providing user interfaces via standard WWW
browsers to the server programs (see Figure 1). Interorganisational communication
of the seller's and buyer's workflows is realised using EDIFACT messages
UNTDID Version D93.A for electronic commerce. Detailed message definitions
are provided for the system using the DIRDEF message description format
of the UN. Data communication can use existing protocols like FTP, SSH,
SMTP, or X.400. Usage of the system within intranets is protected from
the outside world by the organisation's firewall. Interorganisational messages
are protected using, for example, the PGP program. Most of the parts of
the OET system have been implemented using Java language in order to maximise
its portability.
Figure 1: The workflow control interface and one of
the electronic forms of the trading system.
From the user point of view, the central component of the system is
the workflow control tool, which maintains action lists for users. Actions
often involve handling of some electronic form. The user may also browse
status records and logs of those workflow process instances where he is
participating. The system guides the user to access the right WWW form
and controls that the user input fulfils the integrity constraints defined
for the form. The forms offered by the system are specially designed for
the different roles of the users in the administrative processes. The forms
are the basic interfaces via which an end user participates in trading
processes.
For the used trading EDIFACT messages we have designed WWW forms. Extra
functionality has been programmed in the forms using Java language. For
instance, database access can be easily added into the forms using Java,
and ODBC or JDBC interfaces. The program architecture within the electronic
forms supports multilinguality.
Workflows
The basic idea behind workflow systems is that an organisation can be
seen to perform information handling processes. Each instance of a process
of a certain type is by structure identical or quite similar to another
instance (eg an order handling process). The second, and newer idea behind
a workflow system, is that the process types are described in a form which
enables process automation and control. The third important idea is that
the information to be handled during the process can be combined into the
computerised process instances (eg electronic forms). The fourth important
idea behind a workflow system is that such a system can be used for coordination
of the work in a decentralised organisation (ie system glue).
A workflow specification or definition is the representation of the
type of the process, consisting of activities (tasks, steps) and their
relationships (dependen-cies such as transitions), along the data types
handled by the process.
The main task of the workflow management facilities of the OET system
is to ensure smooth flow of business transactions throughout the system,
to guarantee the security of the flows, and control and audit the transactions.
The workflows are defined following the current draft version of the Workflow
Process Definition Language (WPDL) specified by the Workflow Management
Coalition (WfMC). The workflow process definitions directly control the
functioning of the management system. It controls, for instance, that the
trading system does not either generate or accept unauthorised, faulty,
duplicated, or runaway transactions. It also monitors and controls the
trading processes and their state changes, stores data and communication
logs, and manages user authorities.
The OET System supposes that both the buyer and the seller organisation
have their own workflow processes running in their own systems, and these
workflows intercommunicate using EDIFACT trading messages. Another choice
would have been to build a centralised trading system, eg some kind of
broker service run by a trusted third party, where the parties would log
on. However, our distributed approach emphasises the independence of the
parties and guarantees maximal data security. Moreover, the parties have
full freedom to engineer their internal decision making processes as they
wish, and to connect easily their existing legacy systems to the processes
(eg stock inventory systems, invoicing systems).
Figure 2 illustrates basic versions of intercommunicating buyer's and
seller's trading processes. The two large boxes depict processes and the
small boxes activities in the processes. Activities have been named and
assigned user roles. Each process has a starting point and an ending point.
The arrows denote possible control flow. The instances of the processes
are mutually control autonomous with the exception of the EDIFACT communication
links that couple the processes together. These have been marked with broad
lines and the words INITIATE or SYNCHRONIZE.
Figure 2. Intercommunicating workflow processes of trading parties.
Future Directions
The mainstream of current trading systems have been implementing simple
shopping scenarios. In the WWW, consumer oriented systems are common for
selling information or mail order goods. This orientation is natural as
the used technology is cheap and the investment pays back quickly. On the
other hand, systems that assist inter-organisational electronic trading
processes are more rare. This form of trade is characterised by long-living
transactions, high security requirements, multiphase protocols, involvement
of many actors in the process, and embedding of various legacy systems
in the total process. These systems are much more complex than shopping
systems. However, the potential to savings is also huge. In public procurement
field, order handling costs are estimated to be 5 to 10 % of the overall
expenses. It has been estimated that by replacing the manually executed
administrative processes with computerised ones up to 90% savings could
be reached.
The decision to apply the intranet paradigm, open EDI standards, and
workflow techniques in the OET system has proved to be good. The inter-organisational
interfaces are made fully generic, in contrast to traditional EDIFACT systems
that usually have been tailored for certain bilateral usage, or have been
industry field specific.
Nowadays, trade transactions frequently cross language borders. While
ever larger number of users get connected to electronic trading processes,
it is no longer possible to presume that everyone knows eg English language.
Support for local language is becoming increasingly important in the trading
systems. The OET system has been designed from the beginning to be multilingual.
Now there are three languages involved: English, Finnish, and Swedish.
We are looking forward to enlarge the language coverage to most European
languages.
Please contact:
Aarno Lehtola - VTT Information Technology
Tel: +358 9 456 6032
E-mail: Aarno.Lehtola@vtt.fi
Kari Kekki - Tieto Group
Tel: +358 9 526 2274
E-mail: Kari.Kekki@tietogroup.com
