What This Means for You

How you should make sense of this situation depends on whether you are an end user or a developer.

If you're an end user, you're most likely going to implement what your big trading partners require. If you're lucky, you won't have different customers implementing different technologies. To the extent that you are given choices, keep in mind the general considerations presented at the beginning of the chapter. With an understanding of the various technologies available to you, make your choice based on which option best fits your requirements.

If you develop business applications for the people mentioned in the previous paragraph, you should come away with the message that the situation is still very much in flux and probably will be for the lifetime of this book. Even though several mature, well-supported technologies solve the problems of security, transport, and packaging, there isn't yet a widespread convergence on a few common combinations. It is very likely that your user base will be required to implement several different approaches. Your most cost-effective strategy for supporting security, transport, and packaging requirements will probably be to not develop software yourself or build features directly into your applications. You may be better served and may better serve your users by partnering with appropriate vendors or adopting an open approach that lets users plug in packages of their choice.