Lu and Wu clearly have a lot of experience and knowledge about the electronic data interchange (EDI) and Extensible Markup Language (XML) business information exchange problem domain. They use this knowledge to provide a good background on the issues, and a review of several attempted and proposed solutions to the problem of reliable transmission of semantics between two distinct business entities.

There are two axes on which one can plot solutions to this problem. One axis indicates the rigidity of the document format, and the other represents the complexity of negotiating semantics between two parties. The proposed solution provides a compromise between the rigid structures of standards-based EDI, such as X12, and the more free-form business document communication available via XML, while implementing a relatively simple mechanism for communicating between the parties regarding any unknown element within the document.

The beauty of the ReScUE model is that it has built-in anti-entropy mechanisms. Over time, the system continually builds knowledge, and becomes better able to handle these information exchanges with external parties. In doing so, it also strives to reduce the amount of manual human intervention, through both negotiated semantic exchange, as well as the automated generation of conversion templates and display templates.

The difficulty of any proposed solution such as ReScUE is its reliance on all parties to implement the solution. Adoption of such as scheme is difficult, and alternate or bootstrap routes should be explored, such as pre-packaged and centrally available dictionaries.

A note regarding the use of the term X.12 in the paper is warranted. The actual standard is ASC X12, without the dot. More information can be found at http://www.x12.org/.