>
>That was the whole point of "ASAP" (get it?); SAP realized they needed solutions that would "easier". ASAP is their "User friendly" approach for smaller outfits.
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>We have "small" local companies (Gienow Windows) that are running SAP painlessly.
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>The others (ie. Husky) are now using it for B2B; no mention of .NET.
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>I suggest you do the research; it was Boeing and Baan ... and Boeing is not "small".
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>I find it interesting that you think that companies will spend "millions" implementing an available, component-based solution ... The implication being that if they do it themselves with ".NET" it will be "cheaper". Where is the economy of scale ? Or will .NET suddenly make everyone "smarter" ... bringing in projects that meet requirements, on time and under budget. That's magic indeed.

Go back and look at Boeing again.. the ERP solution was eventually dropped because it was too costly.

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>EDI is the _established_ standard for exchanging "transactions"; BizTalk and SOAP isn't going to change that.

EDI is big and bulky.

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>XML cannot replace EDI. EDI defines the _required_ content and codes to identify the transaction types. XML may have a future in EDI, but only in terms of "format"; EDI defines the "meaning" and "requirements" as to content.
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>Companies are exchanging EDI transactions "now" and have been for 15+ years; they didn't need BizTalk and SOAP then, and are not going to stop and "retool" now.
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>You call EDI "ugly", simply, I assume because it uses a format other than XML. Or does sticking an EDI transaction in an XML wrapper (ie. "BizTalk") suddenly make it "pretty" ?
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>Have you ever seen an EDI transaction ? I dont't think so.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I have. I once worked for a timber company. We had a person on staff who was on the EDI committee for the timber/lumber industry. She had shelves full of books to define each record. Big, Bulky, Bloated.

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>BizTalk is a "document manager/router"; it's relevance to .NET is secondary. We're getting a lot of hype but basically all it does is wrap some XML around some other "stuff". In VFP, we call it TEXTMERGE.

You're oversimplifying it. It does much more than that.

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>For most people, FrontPage will do the trick.

Huh? FrontPage has nothing to do with data interchange.