General SOA Supply Chain Information Sharing Platform

Real problems of Enterprises: for enterprises, balanced production and timely supply (providing products to customers in a timely manner, allowing suppliers to supply raw materials in a timely manner) are the basis for enterprises to obtain maximum economic benefits. However, in reality, many enterprises cannot achieve balanced production and timely supply. One of the important reasons is that enterprises cannot accurately grasp the customer's sales information, and cannot accurately grasp the supplier information. In reality, many enterprises are troubled by the scalping effect. The scalping effect is a kind of demand variation amplification phenomenon in the supply chain. It is unable to effectively share information when the information is transmitted from the end client to the original supplier, which leads to Information Distortion and step-by-step amplification, as a result, the demand information becomes increasingly fluctuating. To eliminate or reduce the cool-down effect, you must have a timely, accurate, and comprehensive understanding of customer and supplier information. Supply chain theory holds that enterprises are in partnership with customers and suppliers, so that they must share information to ensure efficient operation and achieve agile manufacturing. The customer's sales information must be real-time feedback to enterprises, or even real-time feedback to enterprises at all levels in the supply chain, in order to ensure the efficient operation of the supply chain.

An important issue in supply chain management is: how to timely, accurately and comprehensively feedback the consumption information of end consumers to upstream enterprises at all levels in the supply chain. If the enterprise information system in the supply chain can solve this problem, many problems in the supply chain, such as the cool effect, balanced production, timely supply, and inventory reduction, can be solved.

Current information system status: the current information system (ERP, SCM, etc.) has complete and powerful functions. However, it does not have cross-platform data exchange and information sharing functions, enterprises in the supply chain cannot share information. For ERP and SCM software, the most important thing is the information of customers and suppliers. The ERP and SCM systems that lack timely, accurate, and comprehensive information about customers and suppliers will only be passive, no root.

What's the difficulty: Technically, different operating systems, different databases, different data formats, and heterogeneous data sources are the root cause of enterprises' inability to share information. Although information sharing can be achieved through SOA, XML, and other technologies, it has not been popularized in enterprises for various reasons.

The most important information and basic functions in Supply Chain Management: it is very difficult to compile a general, standard, and perfect Supply Chain information sharing platform, the General Supply Chain information sharing platform can solve the most important problems. The main problem is: "the final consumer's consumption information is timely, accurate, and comprehensive feedback to upstream enterprises at all levels in the supply chain ". Specifically: 1. How to query the inventory information of each customer at any time and store the information in the enterprise database; 2. How to obtain supplier inventory information at any time and store the information in the enterprise database; 3. How to enable major suppliers to query raw material inventory information, production plans, and customer inventory information at any time. The general information sharing platform is only used for cross-platform information query and cross-platform Data Exchange. Information Analysis and Processing is completed by management software such as ERP and SCM, or by users through secondary development.

Inspiration of trains: the reason why trains can travel smoothly throughout the country is that the rails in China are standard. Cross-platform information sharing is difficult because the lack of "Standard Rail (Standard Data Structure)" leads to train (data) change the wheel everywhere (convert the data format ). XML is only the standard for data transmission. For cross-platform information sharing, data storage standards, Web service interfaces and parameter standards, and standard information sharing platforms are also required.

Existing Problems of SOA software: theoretically, SOA software can solve any cross-platform data processing problem. However, due to the lack of a "Standard Rail ", every time data goes to a new place, it is necessary to change the "Wheel" (convert the data format), which makes it very difficult to apply SOA software. The current SOA software has the following three problems:
1. Non-standard Web service interfaces and parameters: the current web service interfaces and parameters are determined by the developer at will. The result is that a large number of interfaces and parameters are formed across the Internet (tens of thousands, even millions of data) Web Services. After the popularization of SOA, this will be a very serious problem, because the client needs to manage a large number of Web Services, which will cause a great burden to users. At present, there are people worried about this problem. Experiments show that as long as two standard Web Services (one is cross-platform Data Query and the other is cross-platform Data Exchange), more than 80% of cross-platform data processing problems can be achieved.

2. There is no data storage standard: SOA software can only send data to the client in the form of XML files, and only half of the cross-platform data processing tasks can be completed. The client also needs to write the corresponding data format conversion software to convert the data into a relational database. When the number of XML files increases, the data format conversion problem will be very cumbersome, the conversion of data formats also requires professional technical staff to complete, and ordinary users are not competent.
3. No general platform software: the current SOA software can only complete specific functions. Without a general platform software, various functions can be implemented theoretically, in practice, it is very difficult.

The general SOA Supply Chain information sharing platform must meet five conditions:
1. seamless connection: seamless connection with the current information system of the enterprise, rather than the original information system.
2. Standard common platforms, interfaces, and parameters: ERP software emphasizes functions, while general SOA Supply Chain information sharing platforms emphasize standards and universality, it can be installed in various operating systems and can be seamlessly connected with various databases.

3. Simple to use and easy to popularize: ERP software is only used within the enterprise, and supply chain software can play its role only when applied throughout the entire supply chain, only a few enterprise applications will have no effect or even negative effect. The general SOA Supply Chain information sharing platform should be an easy-to-learn and easy-to-use software. administrators can learn to use it within one week, and end users can learn to use it within one day.
4. the simplest and most basic functions that must be provided: You can use simple settings without programming. 1. cross-platform data query; 2. cross-platform data exchange; 3. automatically store query and exchange data in the database without having to write data format conversion software; 4. Conveniently browse cross-platform query and exchange data; 5. Edit the received data and send it back to the sender. 6. permission management. A big and comprehensive platform is certainly not universal. A general platform is only used to process the most basic data, and more complex functions are implemented by management software such as ERP and SCM.

5. Secondary Development: provides secondary development interfaces.

Common functions of SOA Supply Chain Information Sharing Platform
E-mail is a good cross-platform software. The general SOA platform software should be as long as the general SOA platform is installed, users can process cross-platform Data Exchange as they send and receive emails. To become a common SOA platform software, you must have the following features:
1. As long as you know the "Address" of the other party, you can send any data to the other party and directly write the data to the other party's database, regardless of the operating system and database used by the other party.
2. Read data directly as email.
3. Edit the content of the received data, reply to the sender, and directly write the data to the database of the other party.
4. Universal cross-platform data query interface: a query function like Google. If the data is confidential, the user name and password are added. The query function can be called in the software, during the call, you only need to enter the IP address (or domain name), user name, password, and query conditions.
5. cross-platform query results can be directly stored in the user's database without having to write data format conversion software.
Complex and dedicated data analysis and processing are completed by the development of appropriate software. The general SOA Supply Chain information sharing platform does not provide this function. idb_soa already has these five features.

Brief Introduction to the general SOA Supply Chain information sharing platform (idb_soa): idb_soa is a simple and general platform software that can be seamlessly integrated with your current database. With idb_soa, you can build your own SOA platform within two weeks. Functions of idb_soa in Supply Chain Management: 1. It provides inventory query services for enterprise suppliers; 2. It provides inventory query, product, production and other information services for enterprise customers; 3. query the customer's inventory information at any time; 4. query the supplier's product, inventory, production and other information at any time; 5. Order Management: inquiry and quotation; 6. Other functions. The relational data theory cannot be used to compile a general SOA information sharing platform, because relational database theory does not solve the problem of automatically converting data in XML files generated during SOA software execution to relational databases, you must write the data format conversion software to write the data to the relational database. Idb_soa uses the omnipotent "quasi-One-Dimensional Data Structure" table to automatically write data in any XML file generated by the SOA software to the omnipotent "quasi-One-Dimensional Data Structure" in the relational database. "table, idb_soa details and software http://idb.gigcities.com. As a common platform software, idb_soa is mainly used to achieve cross-platform information sharing (cross-platform information query and cross-platform Data Exchange). If you want to perform special analysis and processing on data, you can develop dedicated software.