Additional Resources

   

Chapter 9. Provide Up-to-the-Minute Information to Business Partners

F or the purpose of this chapter, imagine that you are in the wholesale business. Your company buys goods from different suppliers, stores them in one or more warehouses, and resells them to retailers. Although you ship most products to the retailers, increasingly, you ship directly to the end buyer.

At the heart of this business is a strong commitment to managing logistics: A wholesaler is a buffer between manufacturing and retailing . Obviously, this business is highly computerized. Wholesalers typically accept orders electronically , possibly using a server similar to the one introduced in Chapter 7, "Write an e-Commerce Server."

Furthermore, imagine that your company decides to improve services to its retailers. You participate in a brainstorming session and one of the conclusions is to provide more timely information ”for example, up-to-the-minute inventory information over the Internet. You are tasked with the implementation.

The availability of products in your warehouse is precious information for your retailers, particularly the online ones. It enables them to better inform their customers: "This product is available, you'll have it tomorrow morning" or "Looks like this item is very popular. I'm afraid it might take longer for delivery." In exchange for the improved service, they might have to sign an exclusive agreement with your company.

Note

Some companies do just the opposite : They ask their suppliers (not customers) to check their stock and proactively supply goods when their warehouse is empty.

In effect, the supplier manages the stock on behalf of the customer.


In this chapter, we'll see how to build a solution to provide timely information to retailers with the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). SOAP supports Web-based remote procedure calls (RPC).

Obviously, SOAP is not specific to wholesalers. Many businesses would benefit from opening their information systems to some or all of their customers. For example, a manufacturer in a competitive industry might publish regular price updates; an airline can make flight information available online; a hotel can report free rooms; and an auction site can publish bids.

For completeness, SOAP also can be used in totally different contexts: Userland used XML-RPC (an early version of SOAP) in a distributed publishing application, which enabled the editor to interact with the Web site.

   


Applied XML Solutions
Applied XML Solutions
ISBN: 0672320541
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 1999
Pages: 142

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