Collaborative Transactions:
Business-Friendly Applications for the Next MilleniumWe imagine we are seeing the future when we order a CD or book a flight over the Web. But this represents only the earliest stages of a revolution in which radically open and distributed network computing will provide value to customers and opportunity for businesses.
The next generation of applications and product will bring together two important computing models: collaborative computing and transaction processing.
Collaborative computing provides a flexible electronic meeting space for groups working together on a common problem. Current examples can be seen in workflow-enabled applications, document management systems, Notes, the Internet's Usenet. These collaborations have been, by and large, restricted to document-oriented, unstructured, non-transactional uses.
Transaction processing implements a safe, high-performance, high-integrity system for committing in a definitive way the exchange or goods and services. Transactions govern virtually all of our strategic IT applications, and web-based e-commerce as well. However, transactions remain essentially non-collaborative: an individual withdraws money from an ATM, an individual orders flowers for Mom via a browser.
Combining these two models into a collaborative environment for transactions will be a powerful breakthrough. Imagine an insured person submitting a medical claim via a browser; the insurer's server automatically routing the claim to the doctor for elaboration; the doctor attaching exhibits and returning the claim for payment; the check being issued and the insured's records updated.. Imagine a book club passing around their "shopping cart" for members' orders and comments; the treasurer eventually okaying the purchase and submitting the order; and the club receiving a group discount on their books. The applications are limitless.
Browsers, email, bulletin boards and other web features will morph into new tools for shaping and refining transactional requests. It will be possible to "tear off" a partially completed form from a browser, email it to a colleague for further work, or post it to an electronic bulletin board for comments. We will be seeing web pages with electronic "Post-It" notes stuck to them. Overall, we will see people using their computers throughout the process of thinking about, preparing, and collaborating on transactions instead of than turning to their computers only after all decisions have been made and all information gathered.
This talk will examine the whys, whens and hows of collaborative transactions. We will discuss what concepts and standards currently exist for creating such applications, and what more are needed.