Here are definitions of many of the words and acronyms that you'll find in the business to business (B2B) industry:
B2B - Business to Business E-Commerce; a system that ties businesses together and allows them to conduct transactions and share data over the Internet.
B2C - Business to Consumer E-Commerce; a system that ties businesses with end users, allowing them to purchase over the Internet.
Biz Talk - Newly proposed standard, being promoted by Microsoft and the Biztalk.Org organization.
cXML - Commerce XML, used by Ariba.
DTD - Document Type Definition; a document that defines the structure and rules of data.
EDI - Electronic Data Interchange, the an early e-commerce protocol based on ANSI standards.
ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning software, such as SAP or PeopleSoft.
HTTP - Hypertext Transfer Protocol; an Internet protocol that defines the transmission of documents between systems.
HTTPS - Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol; an Internet protocol that provides a secure, encrypted transport of a document between two systems.
OBI - Open Buying over the Internet, an industry standard commerce protocol based on EDI.
OCI - Protocol used by SAP systems to communicate in a B2B environment.
Schema - A document, similar to a DTD, that defines the data structure and rules of a document.
xCBL - XML-based Commerce Business Language, used by Commerce One.
XML - eXtensible Markup Language. Industry standard, but multiple versions exist depending on the vendor.
For further information about how your company can do B2B, please speak to your account executive or sales representative.
