The paper does not dwell on the technical details of EDI, XML or indeed any technology. It is intended to indicate a business development path for enterprises readying themselves for a world of ecommerce that is substantially wider, wilder and rewarding than the constrained applications of today. There are lots of good definitions of ecommerce, and they all revolve around the idea of conducting business transactions between remote partners. We'll use that as a basis, but it's worth bearing in mind that much of what we class as 'commerce' doesn't directly involve making monetary transactions. We transact all kinds of values in the name of commerce - but that's another theme, for another day.
Most people equate ecommerce with the consumer experience of 'buying something on the web'.
But we'll start by looking at the technical basis of ecommerce, and its origins in the bringing of state to the web. It's an important place to start, because as we shall see, the key to unlocking the wider world of ecommerce is a concept allied to that of state, which is semantics . The web reached the wider public consciousness as a publishing medium. The client and server don't establish a session with each other. The industry has developed lots of ways round the problem of short-term state, starting with scripts invoked through CGI, right up to embedded server scripts such as Microsoft's ASP, and Java servlets.