Application Interconnection and Execution of Business to Business Transactions over the Internet

What it presents

PRAXIS, co-funded under Greece's 3rd Community Support Framework, with a consortium of software vendors, universities and the General Secretariat of Information Systems, and pilot users including a bank and four companies. Three goals: a set of processes, reference architectures and protocols for financial transactions; a prototype system for interconnecting business applications and transferring transaction data asynchronously and safely; and a financially viable product SMEs would actually adopt, which meant hiding the complexity from the everyday user and keeping the cost low.

The system

• 23 electronic processes in two classes: internal processes, which are small transactions inside the server and invisible to participants, and business processes, triggered by participants and grouped into six categories — business to business, and business to the tax authority, the statistical organisation, the insurance organisation, the banks and the accountant.
• Six participant roles, matching those categories.
• A server of application, HTTP and database tiers performing three functions: a registry and repository that finds and retrieves the system's XML documents and schemas and keeps transaction logs; store-and-forward, a mailbox mechanism for users; and a web front-end, given a web service gateway so that other systems can reach the same functions.
• Three kinds of client — a fat client integrated into a commercial business application, a thin Java client, and a web client.

The data modelling decision is stated plainly as a choice that had to be made: an existing XML standard for financial transactions, or a tailor-made solution.