The US Department of Defense (DOD) announced that it has completed the latest version of DOD EMALL, one of the Defense Dept.'s most successful online applications. Written in ebXML, and relying on BEA WebLogic Integration 8.1, EMALL is the DOD's worldwide commerce portal, processing more than $188 million in transactions yearly.

Among the innovations which this version of EMALL introduces is the use of the Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup Language (ebXML) standard to conduct messaging between trading partners. DOD EMALL is one of the largest online installations to make use of ebXML.

One of ebXML's virtues lies in its ability to resend messages and retry actions that fail for one reason or another. The persistence of ebXML ensures nonrepudiation of messages while transactions are being processed. ebXML also helps ease the use of digital signatures to verify message authenticity and ensure message integrity. Also, ebXML's nonreliance on protocol makes it usable regardless of the means by which an interaction is taking place, be it e-mail, FTP, http, or 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 is much more than a "shopping cart" catchphrase for electronic commerce. EMALL makes extensive use of service oriented architecture (SOA). BEA worked closely with the DOD to build a customized SOA that was designed to bring a high degree of adaptability to the site, enable rapid implementation of whatever changes the DOD requested, and provide users with customized screens based on various criteria, such as clearance level.

BEA WebLogic Integration 8.1 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, seller catalogs, sales and fulfillment systems, and security services. DOD EMALL also extensively uses modeled procurement and both workflow and business process management (BPM) developed using BEA WebLogic Workshop, to help orchestrate and streamline the flow of messages and application.