Will AS4 be as successful as AS2? AS4 is developed by Oasis, focusing on the functionality of AS2, ebMS 3.0 and a "just-enough-design" principle. The just-enough-design ensures that the protocol is easy to implement in small and midsize organizations. The new protocol has two profiles, a full implementation that supports both incoming and outgoing messages and a profile which enables the sending and retrieving of messages. The latter profile is therefore without incoming HTTP sessions and without a fixed IP address. AS4 has all the makings of becoming a broad-based B2B standard. Cisco has already implemented AS4 widely, who follows? (See the appendix for more background information on AS4).

1. 17 July 2013
Cor Zijlstra
AS-4 explained

2. July 17, 2013 © Copyright Onetrail B.V.
Content
 What is AS4?
 Positioning
 Technical highlights
 Difference with AS2
 Two profiles

3. July 17, 2013 © Copyright Onetrail B.V.
What is AS4?
Positioning
Process
SLA on Process steps and logic
Order Acknowledgement, Shipping Notice, Invoice,...
VAT-code, Country code, units, classification,
Address codes for trade-relations,
delivery- and invoice addresses
Content
order number, order date, street + number or
Street and number, delivery date or shipment date, etc.
Syntax
ASCII, XML, EDIFACT, CSV, TXT etc.
Format
protocol, method, time, security, etc.
Tcp/ip: http, http/sftp, smtp, rpc, SOAP, AS2, etc.
Communication
Usage rules / bila’s
GS1-code system / ISO
INSBOUW-XXX
XML
AS4 covers the communication
layer in the integration stack

4. July 17, 2013 © Copyright Onetrail B.V.
What is AS4?
Intro
 A standard for reliable en secure message exchange using web services
 Payload agnostic (not being tied to any defined SOAP action or operation)
 Implementation guideline within ebMS 3.0
 Starting points are:
1. ebMS 3.0 as a bases
2. requirements from AS2
3. just-enough design principle

5. July 17, 2013 © Copyright Onetrail B.V.
What is AS4?
Technical highlights
 Support for SOAP 1.1 and 1.2 enveloping structure
 Payload agnosticism
 Support for single or multiple payloads contained either within the SOAP body or as SOAP attachment(s)
 Support for payload compression (GZIP [RFC1925])
 Support for message-level security including various combinations of XML Digital Signature and/or XML Encryption
 Support for X.509 security tokens and username/password tokens
 Support for business receipt of non-repudiation similar to the Message Disposition Notification (MDN) specified by [1] used
by AS2 and specified as an XML schema by the ebXML BPSS group
 Support for the ebMS 3.0 One-Way/Push message exchange pattern with support for either synchronous or asynchronous
responses
 Support for the ebMS 3.0 One-Way/Pull message exchange pattern which is beneficial for exchanging documents with
non-addressable endpoints

6. July 17, 2013 © Copyright Onetrail B.V.
What is AS4?
Differences with AS2
 Compatibility with Web services standards.
 Message pulling capability.
 A built-in Receipt mechanism

7. July 17, 2013 © Copyright Onetrail B.V.
What is AS4?
Two profiles
The two AS4 conformance profiles (CP) are defined below:
1. The AS4 ebHandler CP. This conformance profile supports both Sending and Receiving roles, and for each role both
message pushing and message pulling.
2. The AS4 light Client CP. This conformance profile supports both Sending and Receiving roles, but only message pushing
for Sending and message pulling for Receiving. In other words, it does not support incoming HTTP requests, and may
have no IP address.

8. July 17, 2013 © Copyright Onetrail B.V.
AS4
MEPs
One-way push MEP with sync receipt
receiver end point is addressable

9. July 17, 2013 © Copyright Onetrail B.V.
AS4
MEPs
One-way pull MEP with async receipt
receiver end point is addressable