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Update: October 3, 2005
New version provides support for the Business Information Conformance Statements (BICS) 2.0 "suite" of specifications (replacing the earlier single specification, BI-ICS 1.0).
What is Business Information Conformance Statements for Java (BICS4J)?
A conformance statement declares type systems or processes (such as W3C XML Schema, MIME, Schematron assertions, etc.) for specifying total constraints to be applied against a given piece of information in order for the information to be considered valid. BICS4J (formerly BI-ICS4J) supports the updated (and renamed) set of BICS 2 XML specifications, originally called the BI-ICS 1.0 specification.
Specifying a complete set of information constraints increases business-level interoperability during B2B SOA interactions. In order to fully check for validation prior to invoking Web service logic, and in order to declare those comprehensive or exact constraints for business partners, businesses may require more than one constraint mechanism and altered or increased constraints beyond industry standard schemas. BICS4J provides a simple visual tool for statement manipulation and a run-time constraint engine for checking conformance in support of the BICS 2 specifications.
How does it work?
A BICS document instance may be defined by hand or by a tool. The BICS document specifies a set of "constraints" and locations. The conformance statement is then processed against an instance of business information in order to check conformance, and a yes or no result is yielded. BICS4J contains a "constraint engine" supporting multiple constraint mechanisms such as W3X XML Schema, Schematron, etc. Typically, a conformance statement may declare a model of increased constraints, starting with industry-level schema such as a purchase order, and specify additional constraints required by a specific business. Conformance statements (a BICS document) may then be advertised, published, agreed upon, etc.
BICS4J supports Java data bindings for Apache XMLBeans and Service Data Objects (SDO), and it contains an Apache Axis 2.0 Handler for integration with Web services and SOAP.
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