The CEN Global e-Business Interoperability Test Bed has released its draft CWA (CEN Workshop Agreement) for public review. It focuses on solutions that support e-business standards assessment and testing with regards to interoperability issues.
In the move towards globally networked enterprises, businesses are increasingly facing interoperability challenges similar to what public administrations experience in the field of e-Government. These challenges call for more and improved e-business testing capabilities, particularly in situations where e-business standards are to support complex interactions among a larger number of organizations.
Since 2009, CEN, the European Committee for Standardization, has been host to a workshop dedicated to address these interoperability issues. The Global e-Business Interoperability Test Bed workshop (GITB) focuses on methodologies and architectures that support e-business standards assessment and testing activities from early stages of e-business standards implementation, to proof-of-concept demonstrations, to conformance and interoperability testing.
The project uses a holistic approach to e-Business interoperability and addresses the issue by working on multiple layers:
- the Transport and Communication Layer (technical interoperability)
- the Business Document Layer (semantic interoperability)
- and the Business Process Layer (process interoperability)
In a first phase, the project delivered a baseline assessment of existing testing requirements and capabilities. A second phase was initiated to define an architecture for an interoperability test bed at a global scale and the governance structure thereof.
The result of this second phase has now been published as a draft CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA), covering the recommended architecture, the process and key components for the test bed. It is open for public comments until 31 October 2011. More information on how to contribute and comment on the draft CWA can be found on the workshop's website.