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News In Review

March 8, 1999

Commercial Components Ease E-Commerce Developments

EC Cubed fleshes out Java application suite with data-integration component

By Ron Copeland

EC Cubed Inc. recently fleshed out its Java application suite with a data-integration component to help companies that are building business-to-business E-commerce solutions.

The data-integration and business-process-integration capabilities of ecDataBuilder give application developers the ability to create and manage product catalogs, carry out business transactions, manage accounts, and handle order tracking.

The ecDataBuilder joins four other components of the ecWorks cross-application component suite that shipped last summer. EC Cubed's application components are server-side Java building blocks meant to provide core business functionality within a complex application. The components are collections of related business objects manipulated by a business analyst or application developer through Java APIs and a process-definition tool. These components or pieces of application logic reside in the application layer of a distributed computing model.

EC Cubed envisions an environment in which companies build and deliver large-site E-commerce functionality using a collection of commercial components from various sources, says Kip Martin, a senior research analyst with the Meta Group. "We've seen a trend emerging where IT shops are not necessarily looking to buy one big application package. They want to buy the components they need, plug them together, and have the stuff work together--creating a unique and competitive business solution," Martin says.

The key word here is component. Commercial componentry renders the thorny build-vs.-buy dilemma moot because it lets IT developers buy large chunks of core application functionality while providing them with the ability to form-fit and customize the final application through standard APIs and interfaces. Component frameworks such as ecWorks provide the software infrastructure that lets the individual components work together.

Products such as those from EC Cubed could mean that the notion of packaged and custom applications as separate and distinct systems will go away, as companies synthesize the two.

E-commerce vendor TPN Register LLC found that EC Cubed is one of the few companies with a framework that's in sync with its internal development strategy. That's why TPN is using ecDataBuilder and other components of ecWorks in its electronic broker marketplace, says Gary Hare, VP of TPN, in Rockville, Md. TPN, a joint venture of General Electric Information Services and Thomas Publishing Co., provides software and services for industrial buyers who want to procure maintenance, repair, and operation (MRO) goods and services over the Internet.

TPN needed to build a platform that could run as a service to let multiple buyers and sellers interact simultaneously via an electronic catalog. It had designed a component architecture to do data abstraction between tiers and wanted Java on the server side as an object-oriented development platform.

"The EC Cubed frame- work maps closely to that, so applying their components to our framework was very easy," Hare says.

Application components such as ecWorks hold the promise of letting resource-strapped IT departments more easily and quickly capture their internal business logic and extend it to external partners, suppliers, and distributors. According to Forrester Research, components will represent 60% of the E-commerce software market in large companies by year's end.

Experts estimate that components can provide 65% to 75% of the business solution of a core application, depending on the application.

"CIOs are looking for a solid application architecture that can be reused repeatedly for many different applications," says Faisal Hoque, chairman and CEO of EC Cubed. "We don't see a lot of other vendors taking this kind of approach, although we see some component players like n-Commerce Inc. and webMethods Inc. focusing on a single solution area."

EC Cubed is certainly not alone in providing components in the E-commerce market, says Meta's Martin. For example, there are configurator tools from Trilogy Software, Concentra (acquired by Oracle), and Selectica. In addition, Elcom Systems has its Picos Procurement and Commerce Manager pieces, which are integrated and can be purchased in parts, Martin says.

With ecDataBuilder, developers can securely integrate data from multiple sources using business objects and standard APIs. The component provides built-in support for relational databases and flat-files (with fixed-width, delimited, and fixed-block formats), as well as XML, HTML, and EDI data formats.

Cross-enterprise integration is supported through TCP/IP or HTTP protocols. Secure transactions are supported via Secure Sockets Layer or the Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol.

The data sources are defined within ecDataBuilder Application Objects, which can be things such as catalogs, purchase orders, or quotations. Business rules defined by an analyst or developer direct how the objects are processed.

For example, TPN uses ecDataBuilder to integrate TPN Register with Oracle's Purchasing application. IT departments using Oracle Purchasing can have locally hosted catalogs and remote catalogs that are provided by TPN. Their customers can browse the catalogs in real time. They get their prenegotiated pricing, select the items they want, and put them into a remote shopping cart. The application can read XML code that represents items the customer has put in a shopping cart, and it sends the data back to Oracle Purchasing. The XML integration, which results in the generation of the shopping-cart application, uses ecDataBuilder.

Developers can also use ecDataBuilder's open interfaces to build connections with ERP packages. For example, developers could use the Rational Rose application modeling tool to drop in one of the ecWorks components, then add their own unique business functionality to form a custom application.

"Our product vision calls for solutions that can work in cross-industry, cross-application, and cross-platform environments," says EC Cubed's Hoque.

Development with ecDataBuilder takes place in two phases. At design time, data integration is accomplished using APIs or a graphical application called the Administration Application for creating and managing objects and run-time Java code. Upon completion of this phase, ecDataBuilder generates the complete integration component. The resulting Java code can be customized and integrated into E-commerce apps.

The ecWorks suite also includes: ecProfiler, which maintains static and dynamic user profile information; ecWorkRouter, used in E-commerce process definition, routing and tracking; ecTradeMaker, focusing on collaboration used in bidding and auctioning environments; and ecAdvisor, which handles user notification of business events as well as reports.

Fortunately, ecDataBuilder integrates closely with the other ecWorks components. For example, ecDataBuilder can use ecAdvisor to alert users when a session has executed successfully or when an error has occurred. The component can also access the users, companies, and roles created with ecProfiler.

Futures
"We have two product lines: The first are cross-application components, which are more generic in nature and fit in with different applications. The second product line consists of application-specific components that are closer to standard applications but are in fact components," says Tarun Sharma, director and chief architect for application-specific components at EC Cubed. The cross-application component line is ecWorks. The yet-to-be-announced application-specific line has three products. One is EC Source, which is a procurement application component. All are expected to ship by year's end.

Available now, ecDataBuilder is priced beginning at $125,000 for 50 users.


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