Captain Picard – “Admiral, we’ve engaged the Borg”
Day 2 in my RosettaNet development project and all I can say is “Who Invents This Stuff”?
Yes, it’s been a glorious two days of trying to comprehend the world’s most complicated business-to-business process. Only the electronics industry could conceive of something so overly complex. Secure, internet-based transactions were never meant to be this difficult. It’s like swatting a fly with an atom bomb! After ten years of B2B development I though I had seen it all. Boy, was I wrong!
And the worse thing is that you have to pay for the privilege of enduring this torture. Every other xml standards organization I’ve ever dealt with freely distributes their schemas and specifications for everyone to use. Not so for the folks at RosettaNet.org! You’ll have to pay anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars for the rights to use their “PIP”s (Partner Interface Process) which is really nothing for than an XML DTD or XSD (schema) and a process guide explaining the message flow. It looks like RosettaNet.org used to publish these on their web site but now you’ll have to pay for a subscription to get these.
Why on earth would so many smart B2B developers adopt such an overly complex, expensive and time consuming standard is beyond my understanding. Folks, business-to-business transactions do NOT have to be this difficult.
Stay tuned for more fun & games!