3. OBI/SELL: the OBI selling server

From component point of view, Net.Commerce, like many other existing merchant servers, is consisted of

  • A secure web server for handling Internet connection
  • A database engine for managing product, user, order, payment information
  • A scripting engine for rendering presentation and customization
  • A payment engine for checking payment status
  • A shipping service engine for fulfillment support

OBI/SELL is designed as an add-on component to Net.Commerce V3.1. Our design requires no major change to the current Net.Commerce code base, although minor changes are needed due to the different nature between B2B and B2C e-Commerce, e.g. more order status codes are needed for B2B e-Commerce to reflect business control status. Our OBI enhancement to Net.Commerce includes,

  • Digital certificate based user management: Both server authentication and client authentication are extensively used in OBI/SELL to establish proper trust level. The web server is configured to require client authentication to extract digital certificate from a requisitioner's browser. Requisitioners no longer need to go through the explicit registration process to be recognized as legible users.
  • Trading partner relationship management: Trading partner relationship is no longer hard coded into the merchant server. A supplier can easily maintaining its trading partner relationship with its all corporate buyers (e.g. adding new partners, removing old ones and changing parameters of exiting ones) by simply filling out a couple of forms.
  • Customizable catalog facility: The catalog facility must be able to customize the mater catalog to reflect the price structure and other constraints based on the trading partner agreement. Such customized catalog will guarantee a requisitioner get the right price structure and the right kind of choice of goods and services within his command.
  • OBI style shopping experience: There is no need for a requisitioner to fill out shipping and payment forms in an OBI style transaction. All he cares is to find the right goods and services he wants.
  • Net.Commerce shopping cart and OBI object (including both POR and PO) conversion: OBI objects are basically ordering information defined in OBI specification. Net.Commerce shopping cart is actually a presentation of ordering information in a number of DB2 tables within Net.Commerce. New or changed items in Net.Commerce shopping cart for each requisitioner are periodically mapped into OBI objects and vice versa. The conversion process is also responsible for triggering the built-in payment and fulfillment processing for Net.Commerce.
  • OBI object exchange with OBI buying servers: OBI/SELL is responsible for sending OBI Purchase Order Requests to their designated OBI buying servers, as well as for receiving OBI Official Purchase Orders from trading partners' OBI buying servers. Such message exchange must be carried out in a secure and reliable way. OBI standards mandate HTTP as the data transportation protocol and SSL as the security protocol. Once again, both server and client authentication must be used for establishing identity trust.

In order to support the above enhancement, a number of new database tables must be added to current Net.Commerce database table set, e.g.

    • RequisitionersInfo
      Captures all the information of an OBI requisitioner as described in the OBI standard. It mainly contains information derived from the digital certificate presented by a requisitioner's browser and other OBI specific information in the HTTP POST message as described in the OBI standard.
    • TradingPartnerInfo
      Maintains information regarding all of the selling organization's OBI-enabled trading partners. This should include basic information of a trading partner, such as corporate contact information, shopper entry information, as well as security contract information.
    • TradingPartnerAggreemen
      Maintains information regarding the specific agreement each trading partner has with this supplier. It mainly keeps the merchant reference information mainly for EDI coding purpose, including such information as preferred official name for the merchant (as used in creating this particular store), corporate code indicator (negotiated ID or DUN), and merchant reference number in Net.Commerce etc.
    • OBIOfficialPO
      Saves OBI orders received from trading partners into a permanent storage in its original form. Such orders are conceived as a purchasing contract. This table serves as one of the bases to resolve the non-repudiation issue, since it can be used as a data exchange log for OBI/SELL

    The components for the OBI/SELL are all written in Java. The Java Servlet API is extensively used to integrate these components into the web server that supports the Net.Commerce server. The components also use JDBC to access the Net.Commerce server's database engine and also the OBI-specific tables. The servlet support is provided by the servlet engine in the IBM WebSphere. Furthermore, the components also use the Java crypt framework developed at the IBM Zurich Labs to manage certificates and also for SSL communication.


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