Electronic Activity Interchange EAI - a new way of B2B cooperation

In this paper, a new Electronic Activity Interchange EAI approach is proposed to support inter-business cooperation. This idea is based on using tele-activities, being pre-programmed piece of software that may be moved to certain locations and executed there. In contrast to traditional approaches, e.g., Electronic Data Interchange EDI, we consider both program and data flow rather than the information flow only. We propose a reasonable trade-off between a need for remote execution of activities owned and controlled by different business partners, and overall system security and efficiency. Our approach is based on imperative programming of activity code, and two basic activity classes: private, “untrusted” activities, executed with special care and with certain security restrictions, and public activities, being “trusted” code from the point of view of the local environment the activity is executed in. A balance between private and public activities may be defined by the business partners according to the specific situation and the business case.