Triometric

Monitoring the Global Supply Chain

Most of us have used comparison websites for insurance services or booked our travel online at some point. These sites are at the consumer end of complex global supply chains that are exchanging data using web services.

Web services are clearly defined request/response exchanges based on technologies such as SOAP/XML that enable data to be exchanged and transactions to be concluded between participating organisations. The entire process is conducted in an automated manner by their IT infrastructure.

The actual data exchanged varies from one supplier to the next. Each supplier publishes, usually just to organisations they deal with, their data specification – an XML Schema, along with other details of the webs services that they offer. Some of the organisations that consume the information will display it to the end user (distribution). Other organisations will act as intermediaries, collecting data from multiple suppliers, using a multitude of XML schemas, to merge the data into a new XML data set and then supply that to their own consumers.

Whilst the concept of SOAP and XML is fairly straight forward, the amount and complexity of information that is exchanged has grown dramatically. As end consumers, this information is presented to us as we browse – the richness and imagery is very much part of the sales process. Whilst our experience in terms of content may have improved our patience hasn’t – the distribution organisations in the supply chain simply don’t wait for suppliers that are too slow. This is definitely an industry for early birds.

Triometric’s Web Services Analyzer can track the performance and analyse the XML content at any point in this global supply chain..