Technical details

sbXp™ has been designed to make it easy for ecommerce and eprocurement applications to exchange shopping basket information in a simple and reliable manner.

The protocols for exchanging orders between websites have proven difficult to use and implement, for web designers and programmers alike. The OrderXchange business process and Shopping BasketXchange Protocol (sbXp) have been designed from the ground up to be very simple.

Shopping Basket Xchange protocol is based on a simple form post to transfer information from one shopping basket to another. Many shopping baskets use this mechanism.

The protocol is comprehensive, covering multicurrency, multiple Tax rates, multiple line and basket level discounts, multiple delivery charges and multiple attributes (additional information) for each item. There are no limits on sizes in the protocol so unlimited items are allowed at any point.

The other significant protocols for Order Xchange™ are cXML (Ariba Punchout format) SAP OCI and Oracle's iProcurment punchout. Ariba and Oracle use XML as the message format SAP uses the fields in a HTTP post. However both Ariba and Oracle use HTTP or HTTPS post as the transport mechanism for their XML messages.

The actual messages that need to be transmitted are very simple and there is no requirement to use XML as the message format where http post fields are more than adequate. The differences between the Ariba, Oracle and SAP implementations are significant and the SAP implementation is by far the easiest for a web design agency to implement.

One of the more significant e-procurement exchanges has bypassed the entire problem by implementing cost effective buy and supply side solutions that are fully integrated. The exchange/network hub is @UK PLC (UKPLC.NET) and the Order Xchange business process and the Shopping Basket X-change Protocol transport mechanism is @UK PLC's contribution to easier and cost effective interoperability.

Shopping Basket X-change Protocol forms the core of Document X-change Protocol. Document X-change Protocol allows Purchase Order and Invoice documents to be exchanged using http/https post using a superset of sbXp with the addition of delivery, invoice, and ordering addresses.

How does it work?

The way the protocol works is you pass the number of items and for each item the information relating to the item is passed over by using form variables with names of item1NetPrice, item1Quantity etc. It is simple to extract this information and, if required, example codes can be supplied in javaScript, vbScript, C# and VB.net.

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