open standard
An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a common prerequisite that open standards use an open license that provides for extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in their development due to ...
for the secure and payload-agnostic exchange of
Business-to-business
Business-to-business (B2B or, in some countries, BtoB) refers to trade and commercial activity where a business sees other businesses as its customer base. This typically occurs when:
* A business sources materials for its production process for ...
documents using
Web services
A web service (WS) is either:
* a service offered by an electronic device to another electronic device, communicating with each other via the Internet, or
* a server running on a computer device, listening for requests at a particular port over a n ...
. Secure document exchange is governed by aspects of
WS-Security
Web Services Security (WS-Security, WSS) is an extension to SOAP to apply security to Web services. It is a member of the Web service specifications and was published by OASIS.
The protocol specifies how integrity and confidentiality can be enf ...
, including
XML Encryption
XML Encryption (XML-Enc) is a specification governed by a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation, that defines how to encrypt the contents of an XML element.
Specification
Although XML Encryption can be used to encrypt any kind of data, it ...
and XML Digital Signatures. Payload agnosticism refers to the document type (e.g. purchase order, invoice, etc.) not being tied to any defined
SOAP
Soap is a salt (chemistry), salt of a fatty acid (sometimes other carboxylic acids) used for cleaning and lubricating products as well as other applications. In a domestic setting, soaps, specifically "toilet soaps", are surfactants usually u ...
action or operation.
It is a Conformance Profile of the
OASIS
In ecology, an oasis (; : oases ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environmentebMS 3.0 specification.OASIS ebXML Messaging Services 3.0: Part 1, Core Features /ref>
AS4 became an OASIS standard in 2013 and an ISO standard in 2020. The majority of the AS4 profiling points constraining the ebMS 3.0 specification are based upon the functional requirements of the AS2 specification. By scaling back ebMS 3.0 using AS2 as a blueprint, AS4 provides an entry-level on-ramp for Web services B2B by simplifying the complexities of Web services.
Key technical highlights
* Support for SOAP 1.1 and 1.2 enveloping structure
* Payload agnosticism
* Support for single or multiple payloads contained either within the SOAP body or as SOAP attachment(s)
* Support for payload compression
* Support for message-level security including various combinations of XML Digital Signature and/or XML Encryption
* Support for X.509 security tokens and username/password tokens
* Support for business receipt of non-repudiation similar to the Message Disposition Notification (MDN)AS2 MDN /ref> used by AS2 and specified as an XML schema by the ebXML BPSS group
* Support for the ebMS 3.0 One-Way/Push message exchange pattern with support for either synchronous or asynchronous responses
* Support for the ebMS 3.0 One-Way/Pull message exchange pattern which is beneficial for exchanging documents with non-addressable endpoints