RE: Need help on AS2

>Initially, we thought to stick to the Energy Industry profile (GISB)- but
>later advised by our product marketing team,
>we are planning to implement AS2 in our product in such a manner that it
>"CAN CATER TO THE NEEDS OF ANY
>INDUSTRY", the reason given by the marketing team was that several of our
>customers want an AS2 compliant product- and not all of them (in fact, most
>of them don't) belong to the energy industry.

The "Generalized Receipts" profile of AS2 IS INDUSTRY NEUTRAL. The Energy
industry is following the "Generalized Receipts profile" within AS2 (we've
been calling this the GISB profile). The Generalized Receipt profile is also
being used in Healthcare and the Automotive industry.

The Generalized Receipt mechanism defines metadata (headers) that are common
to all industries, for example, here are some commonly used headers from the
Generalized Receipt profile of AS2:

AS2 Header Element Name         Description
-----------------------	    ------------------------------------------------
--------------
To                          identifies the intended recipient
>From                        identifies the sender
Version                     version of the specification being followed
input-format                identifies the type of data being sent (X12,
XML, jpeg, etc.)
input-data                  this element contains the payload
Receipt-Disposition-to      indicates that a receipt is requested
Receipt-Report-Type         indicates the type of receipt to return
                            (each industry defines their own receipt types)
Transaction-set             a unique identifier providing further
description of the data
                            (e.g. PURCHASEORDER, HEALTHCLAIM, INVOICE)
Receipt-Security-Selection  Used by the sender to request a signed receipt

There are more headers than this in the AS2 spec, but I won't list them
here.

Please identify which of the above headers from AS2 your marketing group is
calling  INDUSTRY SPECIFIC, or have them contact me and I'll be happy to
discuss this with them.

Another significant consideration about the Generalized receipts approach in
AS2; it uses "Multipart/form-data" packaging, which IS an industry standard,
ref: RFC 2388. In fact, multipart/form-data is the most popular/widely used
standard on the Web for exchanging data over HTTP. It is implemented in all
commercial web browsers, that I'm aware of (e.g. IE5, Netscape) and  there
are about 30 vendors who provide solutions B2B solutions using
multipart/form-data packaging (Group 8760 is one of them).

On the other hand, the e-mail packaging defined in AS2 is non-standard and
unique to AS2; it is only implemented by a few vendors, that I'm aware of.

Thanks,

Dick Brooks (AS2 co-author)
http://www.8760.com/