DOD EMALL, which is built on BEA WebLogic Integration 8.1 is the Defense Department's worldwide commerce portal, processing more than $188 million in transactions annually.
Among the key enhancements in the new DOD EMALL is the use of the Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup Language (ebXML) standard for secure, reliable messaging between trading partners.
DOD EMALL is one of the largest online operations ever to adopt ebXML, which is designed to allow the Web site to retry actions that are aborted or fail and confirm message receipt to ensure non-repudiation while helping to complete transactions faster.
ebXML also helps facilitate the use of digital signatures to verify message authenticity and help to ensure message integrity. In addition, ebXML is protocol independent so that it can be used regardless of the means by which an interaction is taking place (e.g., email, FTP, http, Web services).
"It is imperative that DOD EMALL users are able to send and receive mission-critical order information among heterogeneous systems securely and reliably," said Gabrielle Zimmerman, systems integration manager for DOD EMALL.
Reliability of messaging became a significant concern as DOD EMALL's transaction volume grew from $13.7 million in 2002 to $188 million in 2003. Orders are expected to approach $300 million in 2005.
DOD EMALL has evolved into much more than the standard "shopping cart" idiom for electronic commerce. ICF Consulting and BEA Systems worked with the DOD to build a customized, service-oriented architecture (SOA).
The SOA is designed to brings a high degree of adaptability to DOD EMALL, helping to enable the DOD to implement change rapidly as the department's needs evolve, and it presents a highly personalized screen to users based on their specific job responsibilities, security clearances, and other variables.
The new DOD EMALL makes extensive use of modeled procurement processes and workflows developed using BEA WebLogic Workshop, a full-featured Java development environment optimized for SOA and it also leverages the business process management (BPM) capability of BEA WebLogic Integration to help orchestrate and streamline the flow of messages and application interactions.
BEA WebLogic Integration 8.1 also provides an integration layer within the DOD EMALL infrastructure, designed to enable the DOD to integrate DOD EMALL in hub-and-spoke fashion with finance and accounting applications, vendor catalogs, sales and fulfillment systems, and security services.