It would be tempting to think that in this age of XML, web services, SOAP, and various other Internet-inspired technologies that messaging would all be using the latest and greatest of technologies and formats.

But it’s not actually the case — while XML is growing in popularity, older formats such as flat files still are very common. That’s reality when you start talking to “legacy” systems. Even if you agree that new systems should talk XML, given the inevitable budget and time constraints, it’s not as if all the old systems can or should be re-engineered or upgraded to talk XML.

The MXC software is designed to handle precisely this kind of situation: varieties of systems using disparate languages, yet all trying to talk to each other. MXC sits in the middle and makes sense of it all. The way it does so is by allowing users to configure the system to tell it what sort of messages it is receiving and sending, and by setting up routing and translation rules in the middle.

Suppose you’re trying to link up two systems which use different dialects of text flatfiles — say one that speaks comma delimited, with a header including date/time, body records, and a trailer with a record count… but the second system talks pipe delimiters, and a different format for dates, times and numbers, and fields in a different order.

MXC uses XML natively, but has facilities to allow all sorts of non-XML-formatted messages to be configured too. it handles non-XML formatted messages by allowing the system to be configured. Internally those messages are converted into XML for processing, with so in the above theoretical example, the source and destination systems can happily talk their own dialects of FlatFile to the black box of the MXC.

And MXC can route the messages elsewhere if needed, be it in XML or any of the multitude of other supported formats.

Thus the “legacy” systems can talk to each other, they can also talk to newer systems without having to be retrofitted for XML, the sun keeps shining, and everybody’s happy.

Today, there seems to be a standard for everyone which may appear to be defeating the point of having a standard. However, standards like everything else in the computer industry have evolved and as advances are made new ones appear often replicating the purpose of previous ones. This leads to the usual stoushes over which one is superior but often these are driven by what one is most comfortable with.

There is always a good reason “up close” for a standard but seen from a distance they can appear like a jungle to the uninitiated.

At eVision, our philosophy is to work with all standards since it is our job to enable organisations and trading partners to exchange electronic documents and messages securely and efficiently in the manner best for them. This is why our MXC solution is used by service providers to host the business transactions of their customers.

Over the years many standards have been produced to address the requirements of exchanging messages. In the early days, EDIFACT and ANSI X.12 over an X.400 protocol were the standards of choice. Now, it is XML over one of the internet transport protocols or via a web service.

However, there have been additional challenges of working on a public network like the internet as opposed to a private network like those of the VAN (Value Added Network) service providers.

And yes, you guessed it; these challenges have been addressed by more standards such as ebXML’s MSS (Message Standard Specification), RosettaNet’s RNIF and web services. For example, they include ways to authenticate entities; to encrypt content; to guarantee delivery (reliable messaging) and to confirm the receipt of electronic messages in the form they were sent (referred to as non-repudiation).

Of course, with visionaries eyeing the holy grail of automating the business processes of organisations there have been more standards developed. These include the most recent version of ebXML’s Business Process Specification Schema (BPSS) and the Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL).

Every now and then a standard comes along which helps everyone and the Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) standard is one of those. Its purpose is to provide a standard notation for representing a business process. Its major benefit is that it enables business people and modellers to define their requirements without getting overly technical but it is sufficiently detailed to enable technical people to derive their requirements. In fact, it should be possible to automatically generate a BPSS or WS-BPEL definition from a BPMN diagram.

At eVision, we have been working with these standards too so you can expect to see a new business process capability rolled out in MXC shortly. A user will be able to draw a BPMN diagram associating business transactions into a process for hosting on MXC. There will be more on this topic shortly.

Internally our MXC software uses unique sequence numbers to store incoming and outgoing messages. For some reason, the convention we settled on was a 10 digit integer (in the database) and a 32 bit integer (in the applications), and while various instances of the software have been running for some years, we are yet to even come close to running out of numbers.

At one stage we pondered putting alerts on those sequences, to warn us in advance of running out. Then we checked and realised that even the busiest of our systems, which has been running for almost five years and has processed over 12 million messages, would take over 80 years to run out of numbers at the current rate.

Of course, this is the kind of head-in-the-sand Y2K-like dismissive attitude that may come back to bite sometime, particularly if (and we hope it does) the traffic rate climbs further.

The lesson here, of course, is to be well aware of the limits, and act appropriately and well in advance if they are expected to be breached. Expanding the IDs to larger field sizes is certainly something worth looking at, when that part of the system next gets revisited.

With modern telecommunications, it’s now relatively easy to set up systems to call their operators for help when error conditions occur, no matter if those operators are in the office or elsewhere. In eVision’s case, if issues occur with our servers, the hardware guys know about it pretty much instantaneously.

Likewise with the applications, we’ve got a number of alerts set up that will advise if there are issues. For a system like the Message Exchange (MXC), error conditions might include things like:

• Network problems, including being unable to see specified remote servers
• Scheduled messages not arriving or being sent as expected — in one client’s case, it’s critical for their business that they receive their daily stock count. It’s dependent on an upstream system which occasionally has problems, so it’s something we need flagged ASAP to get it resolved.
• Unscheduled messages not arriving, when we generally expect them to turn up regularly — for instance, we expect many sales orders each hour during business hours on weekdays, but few on weekends. If half an hour goes by during business hours with none arriving, there’s probably a problem.
• Messages causing unexpected errors
• Warnings of the approaching lack of database or disk space — obviously this is a condition that needs to be avoided.
• System health checks, such as ensuring the database is running okay, and that the various system processes are all doing their thing.

(Note, alarms above are just examples. Alerts actually used in the MXC system may vary between versions.)

Obviously any system should be reliable as possible, and able to handle most error conditions automatically, and the MXC does so. But for some issues you need a human to go troubleshooting, and when your business is relying on it, letting those humans know quickly is the key to minimising the impact on your customers.

Welcome to the new eVision web site. The site has had a big revamp, though you might not notice it at first glance as we’re still using pretty much the same old colour scheme and most of the same graphics we’ve been using since last century! (Actually a new look is in the works, but one step at a time.)

Behind the scenes though is now a proper CMS (Content Management System) for managing the site, which will make it easier for us to update it more regularly with information about new developments and enhancements in our MXC software and other news in the world of XML and B2B. Those who prefer RSS feeds are now catered for, and for people just visiting we hope the new menu system is easier to navigate too.

For our existing customers, eVision has recently moved into new offices in Bourke Street, Melbourne. Happily our phone number is still the same: +61 3 8622 0200.

eVision offers service providers the most advanced system-to-system messaging solution for hosting the business transactions and processes of their customers.

eVision’s MXC solution enables service providers to deliver system-to-system integration as an On Demand internet service by uniquely enabling the remote configuration and management of a customer’s B2B transactions via a comprehensive web interface.

“Today, the opportunity is to utilize the Internet to make software far more powerful by incorporating a services model which will simplify the work that IT departments and developers have to do while providing new capabilities.”, Bill Gates Oct 30th 2005.

It also fully automates the customer experience through online registration, account management, billing, training and help, thus delivering a “hands free” internet service which reduces costs and enables business scalability.

MXC is suitable for any EDI VAN and iVAN operator, B2Bi and BPO service provider, B2B hub operator and organizations that have a customer base or community that exchange documents.

We’ve built long-term relationships with major service providers, of which we are very proud. We provide comprehensive support to our customers.

Press release: Partner Program Update

Melbourne, Australia – December 1st 2005 — eVision announced changes to the MessageXchange Service Provider Partner Program making it even easier to become a partner.

“Our aim is to empower partners to develop and deploy B2Bi services for their customers.”, said John Delaney, co-founder of eVision.

MessageXchange is the only message service which provides a comprehensive browser interface for developers and system integrators to remotely configure, test, monitor and manage message solutions on its hosted messaging infrastructure so the computer systems of organizations anywhere in the world can exchange messages.

“We believe the trend to deliver software as an internet service will only continue to accelerate. And, we also believe that organisations will want the same choice and flexibility as they would as a user of integration software if not more. Therefore, we have pioneered the remote configuration and management of an organisation’s technical requirements.”, added John Delaney.

MessageXchange partners receive discounted access and use so they can provide professional services for the configuration and management of an organisation’s system-to-system messaging, as well as receive revenue from the message usage of their clients on MessageXchange.

MessageXchange is a fully featured message service that supports all the key standards and protocols.

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About eVision Pty Ltd.

eVision is a privately held company established in 1996, specializing in business integration.

Press release: New MessageXchange Dashboard

Melbourne, Australia – November 30th 2005 — eVision announced the latest release of the MessageXchange message service which now includes an enhanced dashboard to enable multi-project monitoring in a single view.

“This new enhancement is designed for larger customers and partners that have more than one integration project running simultaneously on MessageXchange. It enables them to see in one glance their total message usage. It also provides extended summary views by day and week across mutiple projects. This latest enhancement reflects our on-going commitment to delivering a message service that enables organizations of any size, anywhere in the world to exchange messages in a cost effective manner”, said John Delaney, co-founder of eVision.

MessageXchange is a fully featured message service. It supports XML, EDI (EDIFACT and X12), flat files, XSLT (for translation), Web Services, security (e.g. encryption, digital signatures and certificates), transport protocols (http(s), (S)ftp(s), smtp), AS2, message protocols (ebXML and user defined), reliable messaging, real-time and batch modes, and time zones.

MessageXchange is the only message service which provides a browser interface for developers and system integrators to remotely configure, test, monitor and manage message solutions on its hosted messaging infrastructure so the computer systems of organizations anywhere in the world can exchange messages.

It is based on a per transaction pricing model so user organization only pay for what they use when they use it removing up-front software and hardware costs. Users simply choose the Message Plan which best matches their usage profile enabling organizations of all sizes to share in the benefits of B2B and EAI.

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About eVision Pty Ltd.

eVision is a privately held company established in 1996, specializing in business integration.