While EDI transactions account for most worldwide commercial activity, XML-based alternatives are beginning to gain traction. According to Forrester Research, stateful XML, stateless XML, and even flat file exchanges are all projected to grow at a faster rate than EDI over the next few years. The firm predicts stateful XML transactions will be required for a growing number of B2B process-oriented transactions and are projected to exceed the growth of EDI transactions over the next five years.

 This article discusses how today’s B2B support infrastructures must be designed to take advantage of both new and old technology to meet the full range of an organization’s external integration needs and support process improvement efforts across the entire value chain. This article illustrates how to use XQuery and XSLT on non-XML data – bridging the legacy gap using technologies currently deployed and showing how EDI and other legacy formats can co-exist with XML for maximum gain.