ebXML is an international initiative established by UN/CEFACT and OASIS. "The United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) have joined forces to initiate a worldwide project to standardize XML business specifications. UN/CEFACT and OASIS have established the Electronic Business XML Working Group to develop a technical framework that will enable XML to be utilized in a consistent manner for the exchange of all electronic business data. Industry groups currently working on XML specifications have been invited to participate in the 18-month project."

Rationale for the initiative was provided in: "XML and Global Business Exchanges - an invitation." It says, in part: There often competing, efforts underway worldwide to develop XML specifications for global business exchanges. We are concerned that, without some urgent initiative to bring these efforts together, this will lead to considerable confusion and duplication among users and, that as a result, the opportunities that XML offers to the market will not be maximized. Therefore, in a joint venture with OASIS - the Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards - we are launching a global initiative to develop an open technical framework to enable XML to be utilized in a consistent and uniform manner for the exchange of all electronic business data. To facilitate global business exchanges and to make them a reality for all users, we strongly support the development and implementation of open, interoperable, international standards and specifications. More information on UN/CEFACT can be found on our Web site www.unece.org/cefact...The Initiative will be project based, last for about 15 to 18 months and the results will be in the public domain. To ensure fast progress, UN/CEFACT and OASIS are establishing, under this Initiative, an Electronic Business XML Working Group (ebXML/WG) that will be led by Klaus-Dieter Naujok representing UN/CEFACT (Chair) and Dr. Robert Sutor representing OASIS (Vice Chair). The press release to this effect is attached which is being circulated to the media."

The ebXML Working Groups (alias "Project Teams") include (1) Business Processes, (2) Core Components, (3) Technical Architecture Requirements, (4) Transport/Routing and Packaging, (5) Registry and Repository, (6) Technical Coordination and Support, (7) Technical Architecture, (8) Marketing, Awareness, and Education. [2000-07]

From the 'Terms of Reference': "The ebXML initiative shall define its detailed deliverables during its first meeting. This will be achieved by reviewing those contributions which address the technical issues identified under section 1 above and identifying the resulting work items. These deliverables shall be submitted to UN/CEFACT and OASIS for review. A mid-term and final report for submission to UN/CEFACT and OASIS Criteria for Membership: The ebXML initiative shall comprise of a group of experts with broad-based knowledge of existing techniques and technological developments within EDI/EC/EB, XML, and their related standards. Membership in the ebXML initiative is open to any group or organization that is engaged in developing solutions for the utilization of XML in EDI, EC and EB. Each group or organization may designate one or more experts to the ebXMl initiative. Experts are expected to contribute to the work based solely on their expertise. The ebXML initiative is not a commercial undertaking."

From a September 1999 announcement: "The United Nations body for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) have joined forces to initiate a worldwide project to standardize XML business specifications. UN/CEFACT and OASIS have established the Electronic Business XML Initiative to develop a technical framework that will enable XML to be utilized in a consistent manner for the exchange of all electronic business data. Industry groups currently working on XML specifications have been invited to participate in the 18-month project. The results of the Electronic Business XML Initiative will be placed in the public domain on XML.org. The Electronic Business XML Initiative will be led by Klaus-Dieter Naujok of the Harbinger Corporation, a senior member of the UN/CEFACT Steering Committee, and Dr. Robert S. Sutor of IBM, the Chief Strategy Officer of OASIS."

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Principal References

• ebXML Web Site
• ebXML Products and Implementations
• ebXML FAQ document
• ebXML specifications
• ebXML News
• ebXML Marketing
• ebXML JMT Committee Activties
• ebXML Participants
• ebXML Deliverables: Technical Specifications, Technical Reports, Reference Materials, White Papers.
• ebXML specifications for review

Articles, Papers, News, History

• [August 28, 2006] "Registering UMM Business Collaboration Models in an ebXML Registry." By Birgit Hofreiter and Christian Huemer (Faculty of Computer Science, University of Vienna); and Marco Zapletal (Faculty of Informatics, Vienna University of Technology). Paper presented at CEC/EEE 2006. Also published in the Proccedings of the Eighth IEEE International Conference on E-Commerce Technology and The 3rd IEEE International Conference on Enterprise Computing, E-Commerce, and E-Services (CEC/EEE 2006). Sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Electronic Commerce. Held June 26-29, 2006, San Francisco, California, USA. "UN/CEFACT's modeling methodology (UMM) is used to develop global choreographies of inter-organizational business processes. UMM models should be publically available in order to foster re-use and to reference them in trading partner agreements. In this paper we present an approach to register UMM business collaboration models or parts thereof in an ebXML registry. Registration requires a machine-readable format. Since UMM is based on UML, we have to map the UML graphical notation into a commonly accepted machine-readable format. Consequently, we define an XMI representation for UMM models. We demonstrate the XMI approach for both the meta-model (M2) and the model (M1) layer of MOF: The meta-model layer defines all stereotypes and associated tagged values of UMM's UML profile. The business collaboration models on the M1 layer reference the corresponding stereotypes. In a further step we demonstrate the registration of the business collaboration models. These models are managed as extrinsic objects in the ebXML registry. We explaine how to classify a model according to its business context. Since a model may be valid in multiple business environments, we develop an approach using the registry metadata for assigning multiple business environments to the same model. Since the ebXML registry does not natively include any classification groups we present an approach that is compliant to ebXML RIM..." [cache 2006-08]

• [March 08, 2006] "Collaborative Business Process Support in IHE XDS through ebXML Business Processes." By Asuman Dogac [WWW], Veli Bicer, and Alper Okcan (Software Research and Development Center, Middle East Technical University - METU, Ankara Turkiye). To be published in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Data Engineering - ICDE2006 (Atlanta, USA, April 3-7, 2006). "Currently, clinical information is stored in all kinds of proprietary formats through a multitude of medical information systems available on the market. This results in a severe interoperability problem in sharing electronic healthcare records. To address this problem, an industry initiative, called 'Integrating Healthcare Enterprise (IHE)' has specified the 'Cross Enterprise Document Sharing (XDS)' Profile to store healthcare documents in an ebXML registry/repository to facilitate their sharing. Through a separate effort, IHE has also defined interdepartmental Workflow Profiles to identify the transactions required to integrate information flow among several information systems. Although the clinical documents stored in XDS registries are obtained as a result of executing these workflows, IHE has not yet specified collaborative healthcare processes for the XDS. Hence, there is no way to track the workflows in XDS and the clinical documents produced through the workflows are manually inserted into the registry/repository. Given that IHE XDS is using the ebXML architecture, the most natural way to integrate IHE Workflow Profiles to IHE XDS is using ebXML Business Processes (ebBP). In this paper, we describe the implementation of an enhanced IHE architecture demonstrating how ebXML Business Processes, IHE Workflow Profiles and the IHE XDS architecture can all be integrated to provide collaborative business process support in the healthcare domain... We show that by using the ebBP Binary and Multiparty collaborations, it is possible to completely specify the IHE workflow profiles. These collaborations include all the required information such as exchange of documents (interactions), actors, and other constraints or conditions in order to perform an enterprise-wide workflow management. The ebBP specification document is then used by each actor involved to have an agreement (CPA) and to create its own logic and rules to specify intra-departmental workflows in BPEL by composing Web services." See also the Ontolog invited presentation.

• [June 15, 2005]   Sun Service Registry for SOA Supports UDDI 3.0 and ebXML Registry 3.0 Standards.    Sun Microsystems has announced the development of Web Services Registry and Repository for building Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA). The Sun Service Registry "enables service oriented architectures by providing centralized access to discovery, use, and reuse of web services as well as secure, federated information management. By offering a unique single-registry solution that supports both UDDI v3 and ebXML Registry 3.0 standards, Sun's Service Registry enables customers to publish, manage, govern, discover and reuse services within a broad range of applications." Sun's Service Registry is based upon the open source 'freebXML' registry (ebXML Registry Reference Implementation Project), developed at SourceForge.net. The Service Registry supports secure, federated information management for any type of electronic artifacts, and information artifact discovery using domain-specific queries (SQL, XML filter query syntax). It provides for validation of information artifacts using domain-specific business rules, with version control, life cycle management, and governance of information artifacts. Both standard and user-defined taxonomies may be used to classify information artifacts, and the Sun Service Registry offers the ability to define associations between those information artifacts based on custom, fine-grained role based access control. Notification of changes to information artifacts may be sent to subscribers, recorded in a complete audit trail and event log of changes." Common use cases for Sun's Service Registry include: (1) "Publication, management, governance, discovery and reuse of Web Services and related SOA Artifacts; (2) Taxonomy management; (3) XML Schema management; (4) Vocabulary Management; (5) Business Process registry; (6) Medical content repository. It features a single registry solution supports wide customer adoption across diverse domains." Development of the Sun Service Registry was guided by a realization that the "ability to register, discover, and govern Web services is an essential requirement for any Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) implementation. This need may not be fully appreciated in the early stages of an SOA roll-out when dealing with a small number of services. However, large organizations will typically need to support a large number of Web services, and as the number of services deployed grows to dozens or hundreds, centralized facilities for access and control of service metadata and artifacts becomes critical. A service registry provides these capabilities and is a key infrastructural component and cornerstone for SOA deployments."

• [February 14, 2005]   OASIS Approves ebXML Registry Version 3.0 Committee Draft for Public Review.    The OASIS ebXML Registry Technical Committee has voted to approve its ebXML Registry Version 3.0 specification as a Committee Draft and to advance the draft for public review in preparation for ballot as an OASIS Standard. [The ballot was successful, approving ebXML Registry Version 3.0 as an OASIS Standard.] The ebXML Registry Version 3.0 release is a package of some forty-four files, including the two prose documents ebXML Registry Information Model (RIM) and ebXML Registry Services and Protocols (RS). XML schemas and WSDL files complete the distribution. The specification uses schema documents conforming to W3C XML Schema, and normative text to describe the syntax and semantics of XML-encoded objects and protocol messages. An ebXML Registry is "an information system that securely manages any content type and the standardized metadata that describes it. It provides a set of services that enable sharing of content and metadata between organizational entities in a federated environment. An ebXML Registry may be deployed within an application server, a web server or some other service container. The registry may be available to clients as a public, semi-public or private web site. The ebXML Registry thus provides a stable store where submitted information is made persistent. Such information is used to facilitate business to business relationships and transactions." In this context, submitted content for an ebXML Registry includes, but is not limited to: XML schema and documents, process descriptions, ebXML Core Components, context descriptions, UML models, information about organizations, and software components. The ebXML Registry Information Model (RIM) specification defines the types of metadata and content that can be stored in an ebXML Registry. The companion document ebXML Registry Services and Protocols (RS) defines the services provided by an ebXML Registry and the protocols used by clients of the registry to interact with these services. According to the RIM specification, an ebXML Registry is capable of storing any type of electronic content such as XML documents, text documents, images, sound and video. Instances of such content are referred to as a RepositorytItems. RepositorytItems are stored in a content repository provided by the ebXML Registry. In addition to the RepositoryItems, an ebXML Registry is also capable of storing standardized metadata that may be used to further describe RepositoryItems. Instances of such metadata are referred to as a RegistryObjects, or one of its sub-types. RegistryObjects are stored in the registry provided by the ebXML Registry."

• [December 20, 2004] "The Benefits of ebXML for e-Business." By David Webber, with Mark Yader, John Hardin, and Patrick Hogan. Presented at the IDEAlliance XML 2004 Conference and Exposition (December 15-19, 2004, Washington, DC, USA). ['The ebXML specifications have matured rapidly over the past year. New components and capabilities have extended the architecture for service oriented architectures (SOA). This paper discussed a new comprehensive release of ebXML that is available from OASIS.'] "With thousands of users globally the ebXML infrastructure is beginning to enter the mainstream of business consciousness today. Born from a process began by two organizations (UN/CEFACT and OASIS) who each brought unique backgrounds and solution envisioning together, ebXML has created a new and compelling metaphor for conducting e-Business via the Internet. The vision and model for better e-Business using open standards was created by combining the business knowledge gained from twenty years of EDI-based interactions from CEFACT with the OASIS web commerce and marketplace expertise of internet-based companies using XML. That model seeks to move from processes that are highly labour intensive to configure and deploy manually in a paper based culture to a world where trading partners can discover each other and then begin to do business electronically by linking their systems together using ebXML and the Internet. Each step of this process is supported and enabled by ebXML through the use of discreet components that are engineered to deliver specific functionality. Each component can be used individually or combined as needed. Just as LINUX is widely used by businesses today to run their web sites and services, the ebXML infrastructure provides the means for open and low-cost global commerce... The rapid acceptance of LINUX worldwide and especially in high growth countries such as China, India and Japan, should fuel dramatic growth in the ebXML infrastructure as these enhanced LINUX versions become available. LINUX is in many ways the perfect vehicle for ebXML and the availability of ebXML enhanced LINUX versions will ensure that ebXML becomes a critical component in global electronic commerce. [The ebXML] components available today are being used to deploy a variety of business solutions. Examples include supply of spare parts and maintenance support for the Metro Rail in Hong Kong; Banking and Insurance services in Korea; in Australia the Electricity and Gas supply in Sydney and small farmers selling wheat to cooperatives; raw steel distribution in Europe's 24x7 steel marketplace; the US DOD EMALL for logistics parts purchase; State of Texas electricity distribution marketplace; and Volkswagen is working on using ebXML to cut costs to its dealerships and suppliers worldwide. These examples illustrate the range from small to large configurations..." [alt URL for HTML, PDF, cache]

• [December 06, 2004] "Case Study: UK National Health Service NPfIT Uses ebXML Messaging." Authored by OASIS and BT, approved for publication by UK NHS NPfIT. December 06, 2004. 9 pages. Abstract from Pim van der Eijk: "The UK's National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT) is the world's largest civil IT project. A central component of the NHS Care Records Service is the Transactional Messaging Service (TMS) Spine using the ebXML Messaging Service OASIS Standard. The Transaction and Messaging Service provides the communications infrastructure for the National Programme. It serves to interconnect regional network clusters managed by Local Service Providers (LSPs) and national services such as systems for electronic booking and transmission of prescriptions. The technology framework used for TMS is based on a large number of advanced technical specifications and standards. This includes the ebXML Messaging Service OASIS Standard. Within the TMS Spine, ebXML is used to provide reliable messaging functionality. National services such as the Electronic Booking Service (Choose and Book) and Electronic Transmission of Prescriptions are accessed using pairs of XML request and response documents. These documents are transported within the NHS network as ebXML messages. With an anticipated yearly volume of over 5.000.000.000 message by 2010, TMS is likely to be among the largest messaging systems in production in the world. For this very reason, TMS is also likely to be among the larger systems worldwide that will use the ebXML Messaging OASIS Standard..." See "XML in Clinical Research and Healthcare Industries." [cache]

• [November 08, 2004] "U.S. Department of Defense Launches Secure, Reliable Messaging for DOD EMALL Using BEA WebLogic Integration 8.1. ICF Consulting Incorporates ebXML to Strengthen Trading Partner Collaboration with Defense Department's Worldwide Procurement Application." - "BEA Systems, Inc., a world leader in enterprise infrastructure software, and ICF Consulting today announced that development has been completed on the newest version of DOD EMALL, one of the U.S. Department of Defense's (DoD) most successful online applications. DOD EMALL, which is built on BEA WebLogic Integration 8.1 is the Defense Department's worldwide commerce portal, processing more than $188 million in transactions annually. Among the key enhancements in the new DOD EMALL is the use of the Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup Language (ebXML) standard for secure, reliable messaging between trading partners. DOD EMALL is one of the largest online operations ever to adopt ebXML, which is designed to allow the Web site to retry actions that are aborted or fail and confirm message receipt to ensure non-repudiation while helping to complete transactions faster. ebXML also helps facilitate the use of digital signatures to verify message authenticity and help to ensure message integrity. In addition, ebXML is protocol independent so that it can be used regardless of the means by which an interaction is taking place (e.g., email, FTP, http, Web services). 'It is imperative that DOD EMALL users are able to send and receive mission-critical order information among heterogeneous systems securely and reliably,' said Gabrielle Zimmerman, systems integration manager for DOD EMALL. Reliability of messaging became a significant concern as DOD EMALL's transaction volume grew from $13.7 million in 2002 to $188 million in 2003. Orders are expected to approach $300 million in 2005. DOD EMALL has evolved into much more than the standard 'shopping cart' idiom for electronic commerce. ICF Consulting and BEA Systems worked with the DOD to build a customized, service-oriented architecture (SOA). The SOA is designed to brings a high degree of adaptability to DOD EMALL, helping to enable the DOD to implement change rapidly as the department's needs evolve, and it presents a highly personalized screen to users based on their specific job responsibilities, security clearances, and other variables..." See also: (1) DoD EMALL; (2) "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)."

• [October 29, 2004]   Digital Artefacts Europe Contributes Open Source Implementation for ebXML Core Components.    An announcement from Diego Ballve of Digital Artefacts Europe describes the donation of an ebXML Core Components vocabulary management implementation to the open-source community through the freebXML initiative. The freebXML CC project on SourceForge includes a set of tools developed to facilitate the work of domain experts managing data dictionaries. The the project is now available under LGPL terms for use by the open-source community, and will be further developed under the freebXML umbrella. Core Components are defined in the UN/CEFACT Core Components Technical Specification as Part 8 of the ebXML Framework. The UN/CEFACT Plenary voted in May 2004 to submit the ebXML Core Components Technical Specification to ISO TC154 as Part 5 of ISO 15000. The specification is now in process for ISO fast track approval, and will join other parts of ISO/TS 15000 Electronic business eXtensible Markup Language (ebXML), including Collaboration-protocol profile and agreement specification (ebCPP), Message service specification (ebMS), Registry information model specification (ebRIM), and Registry services specification (ebRS). The ebXML Core Components technical specification (CCTS) "presents a methodology for developing a common set of semantic building blocks that represent the general types of business data in use today and provides for the creation of new business vocabularies and restructuring of existing business vocabularies. It provides a way to identify, capture and maximize the re-use of business information to support and enhance information interoperability across multiple business situations." Several organizations and standards bodies now base their data structures and information exchanges on the syntax-neutral Core Components model. The The freebXML CC implementation "is based on the ebXML Core Components specification and comprises a developer API as well as an end user GUI. Where the freebXML CC API gives the developer a chance to use Core Components without concern for the implementation itself, the freebXML CC GUI will allow domain experts with reasonable awareness of the Core Components specification to model their vocabularies and manage their data dictionaries using this methodology with minimum effort." freebXML CC "uses the ebXML Registry to store vocabulary data. More specifically, it uses the freebXML Registry through the Java API for XML Registries (JAXR). Currently the freebXML CC API is in production use state, while the GUI is still a prototype. The API maps Core Component concepts to ebXML Registry Information Model concepts through JAXR API, abstracting details about the Registry itself and providing simplified query and life cycle management features focused on Core Components and Vocabularies."

• [April 07, 2004] "OASIS: ISO Approval May Spark ebXML Critical Mass." [Question & Answer.] By Michael S. Mimoso. From SearchWebServices.com (April 06, 2004). ['If there was ever an Underwriter's Laboratory seal of approval for technology, ISO is it. The International Organization for Standardization last week approved a suite of four ebXML specifications, approval that the specs' authors at OASIS hope will soothe enterprise concerns about using the standard to do transactions over the Internet. OASIS vice president Karl Best and James Bryce Clark pointed to the automotive industry as early ebXML enthusiasts, as well as pockets of electronic commerce in Europe and Asia. With ISO aboard, Best and Clark are confident adoption will grow in some other frontiers, like North America. In this interview, Best and Clark provide insight on the importance of ISO certification and how ebXML stacks up against EDI.'] On the relative importance of earning ISO approval for ebXML, (1) Karl Best: "We submitted those four OASIS standards to ISO for their approval so that we could get this sanction from the international organization in order to promote the adoption of ebXML. International approval of the specification allows various organizations within countries to adopt the specification where they would otherwise not be allowed to. For example, in some countries a government agency can only adopt a specification that has international sanction or approval. By having the ISO stamp on the specification, that means we can allow a broader range of possible implementers to look at this specification and do something with it where they previously could not with only the OASIS stamp on it." (2) James Bryce Clark: "Companies that are in the field that work in this business regularly and know their way around and participate, they've heard of us and some of the people involved and that would be enough for them. But the end users would prefer to have worry about standards only occasionally. They just make a decision to commit and use them and move on with their lives. It's very much like knowing that Underwriters Laboratory has a seal and that means you probably won't get shocked by handling an electrical cord on a home appliance. Outside of our area, which is e-business, there are a lot of people who don't know what e-business is, but do know who ISO is..."

• [March 29, 2004] "ISO Approves ebXML OASIS Standards. ebXML Suite of Technical Specifications Promises to Cut Costs and Simplify Processes for e-Business." - "The International Standards Organization (IS0) has approved a suite of four ebXML OASIS Standards that enable enterprises in any industry, of any size, anywhere in the world to conduct business over the Internet. The submissions from OASIS will be published as ISO technical specifications, ISO/TS 15000. The new ISO 15000 designation, under the general title, Electronic business eXtensible mark-up language, includes four parts, each corresponding to one of ebXML's modular suite of standards: [1] ISO 15000-1: ebXML Collaborative Partner Profile Agreement; [2] ISO 15000-2: ebXML Messaging Service Specification; [3] ISO 15000-3: ebXML Registry Information Model; [4] ISO 15000-4: ebXML Registry Services Specification. Until now, the technology available for most businesses to exchange data was electronic data interchange (EDI), which made significant contributions to productivity and inventory control. Many companies, however, find EDI expensive and difficult to implement. The ebXML initiative, using the economies of scale presented by the Internet, breaks through these obstacles. ebXML provides companies with a standard method to exchange business messages, conduct trading relationships, communicate data in common terms and define and register business processes. It aims to make it easier for organizations to interface with others within and outside their industry, open up new markets with less effort than before and, at the same time, cut costs and simplify process associated with traditional document exchange. 'ISO/TS 15000 underscores the importance of partnership between ISO and standards-developing organizations as OASIS to craft a common set of standards and reflects the international community's recognition of the importance of ebXML in enabling electronic business,' said Alan Bryden, ISO Secretary-General. 'We applaud the developers of ebXML within OASIS and the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) for their contributions to open trade data interchange and harmonization.' 'ISO approval is a gratifying endorsement of both ebXML and the OASIS open standards process,' noted Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. 'ISO designation makes the already widely adopted ebXML standards even more accessible to adopters —particularly those implementing business solutions for governments — who look to ISO for assurance of long term viability.' John Borras, Director Technology Policy, U.K. Office of the e-Envoy, characterized the ISO approval as 'a milestone for domestic and international electronic trade. Government agencies, users, and trade organizations can specify ebXML compliance with even greater confidence.' ISO/TS 15000 was approved by ISO technical committee ISO/TC 154, Processes, data elements and documents in commerce, industry and administration..."

• [March 01, 2004] "Driving Standards." By Laurie Sullivan and Charles Babcock. In InformationWeek (March 01, 2004). "The auto industry is moving to a new standard for dataexchange in an effort to cut costs and simplify processes. Wayne Williams, who sells $60 million worth of Audis, BMWs, and other imported cars a year, believes there's a better and far cheaper way to conduct electronic business with automakers. The owner of Williams AutoWorld in Lansing, Mich., plans to implement collaborative-business systems based on the emerging Electronic Business XML standard that, in addition to simplifying electronic forms processing, promises to cut the dealership's data-communications costs in half. As a first step, Williams AutoWorld this year will work with German automaker Volkswagen AG, which is forging ahead with plans to adopt ebXML, a standard developed by the United Nations for Internet-based business collaboration. General Motors Corp. isn't far behind. The two manufacturers see ebXML as the best choice to replace a costly process of document exchange that relies on conventional EDI, often in conjunction with satellite services. Executives from VW and GM are convinced the rest of the industry will join them soon. 'As ebXML becomes standardized, it will become the de facto way everyone does business,' says Tony Scott, chief technology officer at GM... The ebXML standard, established in 2001, provides a comprehensive set of specifications for conducting secure, reliable data exchange over the Internet. 'The biggest motivation for going to a Web-based process is to contain costs,' says Williams, one of 1,000 dealers in the United States and Canada that VW hopes to pull into its ebXML network. Porsche, BMW, and DaimlerChrysler's Mercedes have said they'll be ready to go live with ebXML by this summer, according to Williams. When that happens, he estimates his $12,000 data-communications bill — spent each month on point-to-point EDI and satellite services — could drop by as much as $6,000. VW is looking for savings, too. The automaker can cut $1 million in annual EDI fees and software using Cyclone Commerce Inc.'s ebXML-compliant collaborative-commerce software to transmit documents, VW estimates. The company also plans to extend its ebXML network to repair shops and parts suppliers, and it expects the system to be better than EDI at supporting large, graphics-intensive files such as engineering specs. 'We wanted to implement more-complex and larger systems that can handle data-intensive pictures, drawings, and transactions on a more-secure network,' says Uwe Matulovic, VW's CIO of North America. Support for ebXML is growing throughout the automobile industry. The Covisint online exchange and parts supplier Delphi Corp. are among those backing ebXML, and Ford Motor Co. has said it wants the industry to ensure compatibility between ebXML and other Web-services technologies..."

• [February 23, 2004] "Microsoft Creates a Stir in Its Work With the U.N." By John Markoff and Jennifer L. Schenker. In New York Times (February 23, 2004). [With caption: 'Klaus-Dieter Naujok, who works with the United Nations, says it is difficult to avoid Microsoft's influence.'] "The chairman of the Microsoft Corporation, Bill Gates, won widespread applause in January when he trumpeted an agreement to give $1 billion in software and cash to the United Nations as part of a job-training program for the developing world. But Microsoft did not seek any attention for a much smaller amount that it contributed earlier to pay some travel expenses for a United Nations business standards group. That payment, critics say, had a much more opportunistic motive than the big donation. Several software industry executives and technologists contend that Microsoft has been moving behind the scenes to undercut support for a set of business-to-business electronic transaction standards jointly developed by the United Nations and an industry-sponsored international standards group. Microsoft and senior United Nations officials said that the accusation was false and that the company's contributions were relatively modest, complied with United Nations guidelines, and did not unduly influence decision making. Microsoft and I.B.M. have been trying to gain backing for a competing approach to writing Internet software, which the two companies argue would be a better, more general solution for business-to-business computer communications than the original United Nations-developed standard, known as 'electronic business using extensible markup language,' or ebXML in the trade. The previously hidden dispute may seem arcane, but it revolves around computing standards that are likely to help determine control over an emerging generation of Web services software that is designed to automate buying and selling through networks of computer connections. Many industry executives predict that the new software will ultimately supplant computer operating systems as the linchpin of the industry. This new fight is occurring as Microsoft, the world's largest software company, moves to the final stages of its legal dispute with antitrust regulators in Europe over its right to integrate features of its competitors' products into its Windows operating system. On another front, Microsoft is being challenged by an array of open-source programs -- starting with Linux but expanding to other arenas -- that are being developed by a loosely organized group of software programmers and distributed at little or no cost..."

• [February 20, 2004]   OASIS Members Form Electronic Business Service Oriented Architecture TC.    A new ebSOA (Electronic Business Service Oriented Architecture) technical committee has been created by OASIS members to continue work on the ebXML Technical Architecture. The goal is to advance the version 1.04 model to "a more current architecture that takes into account both subsequent releases of the ebXML specifications and other Web Services and service-oriented architecture works, including the work of the W3C Web Services Architecture WG. The TC will assess the implementability and interoperability of the multiple ebXML and Web Services specifications, providing relevant comments and suggestions to OASIS TCs and other panels managing the individual specifications. The proposed schedule calls for release of an eBusiness Service Oriented Architecture Technical Specification within eighteen months, preceded by incremental working drafts. A Service Oriented Architecture Best Practices Document covering both ebXML and Web Services will also be published. Duane Nickull (Adobe) is the Proposed TC Chair. The first meeting of the OASIS ebSOA TC will be held April 29, 2004 in New Orleans, LA, USA.

• [January 23, 2004] "ebXML Adoption Update." By Monica Martin (Sun Microsystems) and others, ebXML MARKETING. December 22, 2003. 44 pages. "The OASIS ebXML Awareness Team has prepared this document in collaboration with OASIS member organizations and partners to give a global picture of the current status of ebXML adoption. Our aim is to increase awareness of the substantial amount of ebXML-related activity occurring throughout the world today. This repor -- which represents our best initial and ongoing research at this time and may not be exhaustive -- summarizes the status of close to 100 completed, ongoing or progressive ebXML-related projects. ebXML is unique in the breadth of its standards vision and arguably represents the culmination of all previous standards efforts toward a shared global Internet-based B2B framework. ebXML is complementary to many existing standards, such as legacy EDI, XML-based business document standards, and Web Services. Decision makers, involved in global B2B commerce and responsible for making B2B infrastructure investments must evaluate their business strategies and consider the likely need to support trading partners who will want to engage electronically using ebXML protocols. No truly successful technology or standard is an island. It is therefore exciting to witness ebXML adapting, evolving and growing through research and deployment around the world. Over 2,000 people contributed to the original ebXML development efforts, made public in May 2001. Since then, continuing standards development, pursued jointly by OASIS and UN/CEFEACT, has being augmented by creative real world projects applying ebXML with other technologies such as Web Services, XML as a whole, as well as legacy EDI. Major vendors have developed ebXML support into their flagship products and new ebXML vendors are emerging. Key industry sectors and government entities are deploying new eBusiness applications that are serving as benchmarks in the adoption of ebXML globally. Industry groups and standards bodies are working to bring their vocabularies into alignment around ebXML, promising a new level of interoperability that industry has been seeking for more than a decade..."

• [January 12, 2004] "Shopping Without Dropping. DOD EMall Embraces New XML Extension to Handle Transactions of $1 Million Weekly." By Joab Jackson (GCN Staff). In Government Computer News Volume 23, Number 1 (January 12, 2004). "To keep pace with spiraling traffic, the Defense Department's EMall portal is shifting to an emerging transactions standard based on th Extensible Markup Language (XML). The portal is one of the largest online operations -- inside government or out -- to adopt the standard, called Electronic Business Using XML, or ebXML. By spring, the DOD EMall team expects the purchasing portal will be completely powered by ebXML. The mall's business has been growing while the systems supporting it have gotten more complex, said Debra Roobol, the DOD EMall program manager and chief of the Defense Logistics Agency's E-Commerce and Standards Branch. Those systems -- managed by a trio of prime contractors -- processed about 360,000 transactions in fiscal 2003, or about $1 million per week. This year, the number of transactions will grow to 475,000, Roobol estimated. EbXML has advanced features useful to DOD EMall, ICF's Byrd said. It can eliminate duplicate orders and allow automatic retries if first attempts fail. It also supports asynchronous processing -- if one part of the system is slow to respond, the order will be routed without requiring the user to wait for confirmation. Another advantage is that ebXML is interoperable with Web services environments that do not use BEA products or J2EE components..."

• [December 01, 2003] "OASIS ebXML Messaging Services 3.x Feature Preview. Edited by Matthew MacKenzie (Adobe Systems Incorporated) and Ian Jones (BT Group plc). 12/1/2003. 15 pages. Contributors: Doug Bunting (Sun Microsystems), Mike Dillon (Drummond Group), Dale Moberg (Cyclone Commerce), Pete Wenzel (SeeBeyond Technology Corporation), Jacques Durand (Fujitsu Software). This document discusses proposals that the OASIS ebXML Messaging Services Technical committee are considering for inclusion in the next major release of the ebXML Message Service Specification... A large topic of discussion amongst the members of the ebXML Messaging Services TC for over a year has been version 3.x of the specification. The decision to extend the discussion for such a long period of time was made so that we could allow other complimentary specifications such as SOAP 1.2, WSRM and WSS to mature to the point where we could consider integrating these technologies into the specification. It was also useful to allow a number of version 2.0 implementations to be developed and thoroughly tested to identify any issues or changes that may be required, especially in the area of interoperability. In this paper, we've separated proposed features for version 3.x into distinct categories: complimentary technology integration, changes to existing functionality and new features. The purpose of this paper is to promote discussion and stimulate interest in the 3.x specification development process. Comments, contributions and feature prioritization suggestions are invited from any and all interested parties, whether or not they have formal representation as part of the OASIS development process, although participation in the TC is encouraged. Any contributions should in the first instance be submitted to the discussion lists detailed earlier or via one of the contributors or officers of the TC as described on the TC's web site..." Note: Matthew MacKenzie 2005-02-03: "This document is formatted as though it is a combined work of the members listed in it, which it is not..." [source PDF]

• [November 10, 2003] "Adobe Extends Commitment to XML Standards with Acquisition of Yellow Dragon Software. Acquired Technology Assets Enable Native ebXML Support in Adobe's Intelligent Document Platform and Streamline Collaboration Across the Extended Enterprise. - "Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced that it has acquired the technology assets of privately held Yellow Dragon Software, a developer of XML messaging and metadata management software. The acquisition will deliver technology that further strengthens Adobe's XML architecture, which enables businesses and governments to combine the powerful data and business logic capabilities of XML with the rich presentation and enhanced security capabilities of Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Yellow Dragon provides a commercial, off-the-shelf ebXML (Electronic Business eXtensible Markup Language) solution using an XML registry, as well as a messaging product, for reliably delivering XML messages between servers. The ebXML specification is a technical framework for using XML in a consistent manner in the exchange of electronic business data. By enabling native support for ebXML transactions within the Adobe Intelligent Document Platform and PDF, Adobe is making it faster and easier for organizations to automate their external business processes and protect their investments using open standards. Adobe plans to integrate this technology into its server products next year. 'The addition of Yellow Dragon is a powerful extension to the Adobe Intelligent Document Platform,' said Ivan Koon, senior vice president at Adobe. 'We believe Yellow Dragon's technology will enable us to offer XML functionality which will be mandated by governments and businesses over the next few years. We also gain experienced engineers who are active in the XML standards arena, and who helped define the ebXML standard.' 'The core team at Yellow Dragon has been involved in the XML standards effort since the beginning,' said Duane Nickull, executive vice president and co-founder of Yellow Dragon. 'Joining the Adobe team will help ensure that our XML technologies enjoy broad adoption as the need for document services grows in the market. We look forward to continuing to deliver new XML technologies that will solve customers' document problems.' Sponsored by the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), ebXML is a globally developed open XML specification that provides a standard method to exchange business messages, conduct trading relationships, communicate data in common terms, and define and register business processes. The ebXML standard is being widely adopted by governments and manufacturers worldwide..."

• [October 20, 2003] "ebXML Business Process Specification Advances Within OASIS. Fujitsu, Sterling Commerce, Cyclone Commerce, Sun Microsystems and Others Support Expanded ebXML Work at OASIS." - "Developers of the ebXML Business Process Specification Schema (BPSS) have decided to advance their work under the technical process of the OASIS international standards consortium. The newly formed OASIS ebXML Business Process (BP) Technical Committee will further define the royalty-free ebXML BPSS model for binary and multiparty business collaborations both within and between enterprises. ebXML BP will support the exchange of standards-based business process definitions, such as those developed by industry-specific organizations, enabling standard, interoperable process configurations that effectively meet business collaboration requirements for analysis, design, and production use. ebXML BP is part of the modular suite of specifications that enable enterprises of any size, in any global region to conduct business using the Internet. ebXML comprises open, royalty-free standards for business process collaboration, core data components, collaboration protocol agreements, messaging, and registries and repositories. ebXML implementers span the globe and include General Motors, the US Center for Disease Control, the Pan Asia e-Trade Alliance, and TransCanada Pipelines. RosettaNet has formally adopted ebXML BPSS as a mechanism for expressing business collaborations involving RosettaNet PIPs, and government agencies around the world recommend the use of ebXML. 'ebXML is the only framework that is at the same time generic and flexible and can be used for inter-administrations relations,' concluded the European Commission's Interchange of Data between Administrations (IDA) in its study, 'Business to Business Frameworks for IDA Networks.' 'Moreover, ebXML is clearly the only trend for organised business communities. The general recommendation is to follow ebXML standards as much as possible.' 'ebXML BP will enable legally enforceable, easily manageable, and fully traceable collaborations,' said Dale Moberg of Cyclone Commerce, convenor and proposed co-chair of the OASIS ebXML BP Technical Committee. 'Industry standards organizations will be able to use ebXML BP schemas and formats to specify business process definitions for their own collaboration communities.' The OASIS ebXML BP TC will base its work on ebXML BPSS version 1.01, jointly developed by OASIS and the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (CEFACT) and on derivative work expected to be donated by a range of participants. 'We're excited to continue this work within the OASIS technical process,' noted Monica J. Martin of Sun Microsystems, proposed co-chair of the OASIS ebXML BP Technical Committee. 'OASIS provides an environment for us to adhere to the ebXML principles of a loosely coupled, highly aligned specification set, while enabling support for other emerging Web service technologies, OASIS specifications, and products from industry standards organizations'..."

• [October 20, 2003]   UN/CEFACT Announces V1.1 Release of ebXML Business Process Specification Schema.    A posting from Klaus-Dieter Naujok (UN/CEFACT/TMG Chair) announces the final release publication of UN/CEFACT ebXML Business Process Specification Schema Version 1.1. This ebXML BPSS specification was "developed in accordance with the UN/CEFACT/TRADE/22 Open Development Process (ODP) for Technical Specifications and has been approved by the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) Techniques and Methodologies Group (TMG). It defines a standard language by which business systems may be configured to support execution of business collaborations consisting of business transactions. The document is based upon prior UN/CEFACT work, specifically the metamodel behind the UN/CEFACT Modeling Methodology (UMM) defined in UN/CEFACT Modeling Methodology -- Meta Model -- Revision 12. Over the last two years, interested parties from around the world have collaborated in the development of the Specification addressing a number of deficiencies implementers of Version 1.01 identified." As to the TMG's BPSS road map, "as agreed to by the TMG in March 2003, work on Version 2.0 and alignment with the UMM Meta-Model's Business Transaction View (BTV) will commence starting with the upcoming TMG meeting in December. Interested parties are invited to attend the meeting in Waidhofen/Ybbs (Austria), 8-12 December 2003." The UN/CEFACT TMG has also announced commencement of technical work on a Business Collaboration Framework (BCF) based upon the UMM Meta-Model; it is focused on the creation of a new e-business standard using a "technological and implementation neutral approach to the exchange of global information requirements."

• [October 18, 2003] "UN/CEFACT Announces Release of Its ebXML Business Process Specification Schema Version 1.1." - "The Technologies and Methodologies Group (TMG) of the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business announce the final release of its ebXML Business Process Specification Schema (BPSS) Version 1.1 prepared under the UN/CEFACT Open Development Process. Over the last 2 years interested parties from around the world have collaborated in the development of the Specification addressing a number of deficiencies implementers of Version 1.01 identified. Regarding the BPSS road map, as agreed to by the TMG in March 2003, work on Version 2.0, alignment with the UMM Meta-Model's Business Transaction View (BTV), will commence starting with the upcoming TMG meeting in December. Interested parties are invited to attend the meeting in Waidhofen/Ybbs (Austria), 8-12 December 2003. Parties interested in the BPSS V1.1 can download it from the TMG's Web Site under 'Approved Documents'. UN/CEFACT, which is based in the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, and has a global remit, has led the development of international standards for electronic transactions for government, commerce and industry. Its experience and ability to bring together world class experts and match trends in information technology with business requirements, in an open and transparent way, gives UN/CEFACT a unique viewpoint..."

• [October 11, 2003] "ebXML Registry Overview. What Is An ebXML Registry, and What Can It Do?" From the OASIS ebXML Registry Technical Committee. October 2003. 2 pages. "An XML registry is an information system that securely stores XML artifacts (e.g., XML schemas, data elements, etc.) and non-XML artifacts (e.g., other e-business objects), as well as details (metadata) about the artifacts. The storage facility (e.g., a file system or database) that holds registered objects is known as a repository, while the part of the information system that maintains the metadata for the registered objects is known as a registry. ebXML Registry Benefits: (1) Promotes service discovery and maintenance of registered content (2) Enables secure and efficient version control for registered content (3) Promotes unified understanding of registered content in federated registries (4) Ensures availability and reuse of authoritative artifacts. A controlled registration and validation of XML / non-XML artifacts from authoritative sources promotes interoperability between trading partners, and facilitates greater reuse (5) Enables collaborative development. Users can create XML / non-XML artifacts and submit them to an XML registry for use and potential enhancement by authorized parties. The enhanced versions can then be made available for access by other authorized parties. ebXML Registry allows a federation of cooperating registries to act as a single e-Business Registry. This ability enables the tying together of internal applications and the systems of critical trading partners via Seamless Query [search registered content in any registry in a federation, regardless of registry type], Seamless Synchronization [synchronization of registered content between all registries in a federation, regardless of registry type], and Seamless Relocation [relocation of registered content from one registry to another in a federation, regardless of registry type]... ebXML Registry enables a secure deployment with reduced implementation / maintenance costs for semantically correct and meaningful information exchange packages. To control how its content is accessed it leverages the XML Signature and XACML standards. Additionally, the ability to employ Policy Decision Points (PDPs) allows it to act as a 'Policy Store' for resources that reside outside its own registry... The ebXML Registry supports e-Business operations in different geographic locations, providing an effective discovery and collaboration tool. For example, (i) locating partners, capabilities, services, documents and business processes; (ii) interacting with partners subsidiaries, customers about multiple product lines. More than just a classification tool for electronic yellow pages it enables the distributed marketing and promotion products and services, viewing of inventory levels, ordering of goods and return tracking, and accessing account information via the Web..." See also: "New Production-Ready Release of Open Source ebXML Registry." [source .DOC and PDF]

• [October 10, 2003] "ebXML Case Study: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Public Health Information Network Messaging System (PHINMS)." OASIS ebXML Member Section. Contributor: Alan Kotok (ebXML Forum). October 04, 2003. 8 pages. "The Public Health Information Network Messaging System (PHINMS) provides a secure and reliable messaging system for the Public Health Information Network. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that there are currently multiple systems in place that support communications for public health labs, the clinical community, and state and local health departments. However, many of these systems operate in isolation, not capitalizing on the potential for a cross-fertilization of data exchange. A crosscutting and unifying framework is needed to better monitor these data streams for early detection of public health issues and emergencies. To meet these requirements, the Public Health Information Network will enable a consistent exchange of response, health, and disease tracking data between public health partners. Ensuring the security of this information is also critical as is the ability of the network to work reliably in times of national crisis... Developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, PHINMS uses the ebXML, infrastructure to securely transmit public health information over the Internet. PHINMS is a generic, standards-based, interoperable and extensible message transport system. It is platform-independent and loosely coupled with systems that produce outgoing messages or consume incoming messages... PHINMS has three major components: the Message Sender, Message Receiver, and Message Handler. The Message Sender functions as the client. It is a Java application that runs on a workstation or server. The Message Sender polls the Transport Queue for outgoing data. The Transport Queue can be a database table or a file system directory. When outgoing data is found, the Message Sender packages the data as an ebXML message and sends it to the Message Receiver. The Message Receiver functions as a server. It is a servlet that runs on a J2EE compliant application server. When the Message Receiver receives a message, it processes the message envelope, decrypts the message, verifies the signature and then forwards the message payload to the Message Handler or writes the message directly into a worker queue. The Message Handler can process synchronous messages posted by the message receiver or poll the worker queue. It is a servlet that runs on a J2EE compliant application server. The Message Handler and the Message Receiver can reside on the same system. When the Message Handler receives the message payload from the Message Receiver in synchronous scenarios, it processes the message payload and then sends a response, which contains the Message Handler's status, back to the Message Receiver. In asynchronous scenarios, the message handler polls its worker queue to receive the incoming message..." [source PDF]

• [September 22, 2003]   OASIS Members Form ebXML Business Process Technical Committee.    A new OASIS ebXML Business Process Technical Committee (ebXML BP TC) has been proposed to "continue work on a royalty-free technology representation and model compatible with an underlying generic metamodel for business processes, activities, and collaboration. This business collaboration could occur within or between enterprises. The collaboration may be enforceable, easily manageable, and/or traceable. This representation and model will provide a set of guidelines to define the business process-rules, semantics and syntax for both binary and multi-party collaborations. The representation and model will work within the ebXML architecture (for metamodel and model exchange) and will also support standards-based development and exchange of business process definitions. The OASIS ebXML Business Process TC's effort will address and align with vertical industry needs for business process collaboration and focus on ease of use. The specification can be integrated into and bind with existing or emerging technologies. The TC's work should build upon similar, existing standards wherever possible and align with other relevant standards for feature reuse, bindings, guidelines on how to jointly use the specification with other related standards, and addressing requirements from other related standards. The TC will base its work upon the ebXML Business Process Specification Schema Version 1.01 jointly developed by OASIS and UN/CEFACT, and upon derivative work expected to be donated by co-sponsors and participants." The proposed TC Co-Chairs are Dale Moberg (Cyclone Commerce) and Monica J. Martin (Sun Microsystems). The first meeting of the OASIS ebXML Business Process TC will be held on October 20, 2003 as a teleconference. [Full context]

• [September 17, 2003]   New Production-Ready Release of Open Source ebXML Registry.    A communiqué from Farrukh Najmi (Sun Microsystems) describes a new production-ready release of ebXML Registry software from the OASIS ebXML Registry Reference Implementation Project (ebxmlrr). As part of the freebXML Initiative, the ebxmlrr project is chartered to deliver a "royalty free, open source, functionally complete reference implementation for the OASIS ebXML Registry specifications as defined by the OASIS ebXML Registry Technical Committee." The 'ebxmlrr 2.1-final1' release also implements most optional features of the version 2.1 ebXML Registry specifications as well as several new features of the latest interim specifications for ebXML Registry version 3. This ebXML Registry implementation provides several new features, including: "(1) Web Content Management capability; (2) Role base access control using XACML access control policies; (3) Locale sensitive Registry Browser; (4) XML based fully configurable Registry Browser; (5) Usability improvements in the Registry Browser; (6) Support for read-only mode when the user is unauthenticated; (7) Web browser integration. The client package of the ebxmlrr project includes a JAXR provider, enabling standard Java API access to the ebXML registry services." The freebXML initiative "aims to foster the development and adoption of ebXML and related technology through software and experience sharing. It has created a centralized web site for the sharing of 'free' ebXML code and applications as well as development and deployment experience, and promotes ebXML as an e-commerce enabling technology. The initiative is sponsored by the Center for E-Commerce Infrastructure Development and the Department of Computer Science & Information Systems at the University of Hong Kong."

• [September 02, 2003] "Webswell Connect 1.1 Beta Provides Open Source ebXML Integration Framework." - "The Webswell company has launched a new release of its open source ebXML integration framework Webswell Connect, version 1.1 Beta. The 1.1. Beta version contains: (1) E-business registry server and client. The server stores and allows to find and process information about partners participating (or willing to participate) in e-business integration. The information includes partner profiles, technical descriptions of services, business processes and technical agreements. This component is based on ebxmlrr registry and repository implementation. (2) Messaging system, a component responsible for secure and reliable messaging between communicating parties. It is used for transmitting business documents during business transactions (which can be conducted by special agreements between business partners). (3) Simple user interface for sending/handling messages. It allows end users to participate in e-business transactions without having full framework with business processes implementations installed. Additional software necessary for installation, configuration and running of the framework (database server, Tomcat, etc.) All components are preconfigured and ready to use. Webswell Connect allows easy, interactive and user-friendly installation. It is entirely open source, free and available for download..."

• [August 21, 2003] "ebXML Asia Committee Starts New ebXML Interoperability Certification Program. Twelve Organizations Receive Certifications on ebXML Message Service specification 2.0." - On August 8, 2003 the ebXML Asia Committee "announced the start of a new ebXML interoperability certification program and issued ebXML interoperability certification on ebXML Message Service specification 2.0, including basic functions and reliable messaging, for 12 companies and organizations passed the interoperability test. Interoperability is one of key issues to realize Internet based B2B eBusiness using multi-vendor implementations,even across countries. ebXML Message Service is designed for B2B communication and its reliable messaging function is to guarantee message delivery such as arrival of a business message sent from one company to another,preservation of message order and elimination of duplicated arrival of business messages. The goal of the ebXML ASIA Committee interoperability certification is to promote ebXML through the certification of interoperability among ebXML Asia Committee members' products. The certificate includes such information as 'Class' which specifies the ebXML specification to be covered and 'Level' which specifies the test categories. ebXML Asia Committee interoperability test is performed by the Interoperability Task Group (ITG) and the interoperability certification is issued by ebXML ASIA committee... ITG will soon initiate the third round of ebXML Interoperability test, which will cover security related test items of ebXML Message Service Specification... ebXML Asia Committee is a regional committee jointly initiated by the Electronic Commerce Promotion Council of Japan (ECOM) of Japan, the Korea Institute for Electronic Commerce (KIEC) of Korea and the Taipei Computer Association of Chinese Taipei. The Committee was established in December 2000 to promote ebXML in Asia, to jointly deal with ebXML work through the cooperation among Asian countries and to facilitate electronic commerce in the Asian region. With the gradual increase of membership, there are currently more than 24 organizational members from 11 regions of Asia Pacific (Australia, China, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, and Thailand)..."

• [August 2003] "OASIS ebXML Update: Completion of ebXML Second Phase." [Memo of August 27, 2003 from Patrick Gannon, President & CEO, OASIS.] "OASIS and UN/CEFACT have completed the second phase of ebXML (Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup Language), our joint initiative that began in 1999. In the first 18-month phase, joint teams completed a set of substantive technical specifications which provided an interoperable, vendor-neutral, openly available stack of XML standards for B2B e-commerce. In a second transitional phase, OASIS and UN/CEFACT split the substantive work, each housing several of the ongoing project teams while maintaining linkage through a Joint Coordinating Committee (JCC). After two years, the ebXML JCC has completed its mission. The two organizations will continue to support and promote the ebXML standards under respective separate procedures. The transitional second phase saw many successes for ebXML, including: (1) the issuance of updated versions 2.0 of the ebXML Message Service (MSG), Registry Information Model (RIM), Registry Services (RS) and Collaboration Protocol Profile & Agreement (CPPA) specifications as OASIS Standards (2) approval by the UN/CEFACT plenary of all the ebXML OASIS Standards (3) widespread implementations and tools based on ebXML, particularly by government agencies and vertical industry supply-chain consortia In its third phase, OASIS will continue to support the OASIS ebXML specifications and serve as a focal point for users and vendors interested in the maintenance, implementation and advancement of our ebXML Standards. This ongoing work includes the following: [a] OASIS Technical Committees for ebXML Messaging, CPPA, Registry/Repository, and Implementation, Interoperability and Conformance (IIC) each will continue to actively develop and refine ebXML specifications in use today... [b] Additional efforts, including the OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) TC, the OASIS Web Services Reliable Messaging TC, and the OASIS Web Services for Business Process Execution Language (WSBPEL) TC, also will have the opportunity to liaise and define interoperability with the ebXML stack. [c] OASIS will continue to maintain the www.ebxml.org informational web site that we have hosted since the project's launch... OASIS expresses its thanks to the representatives from Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Sterling Commerce, Global Exchange Services, and other organizations who served as our representatives to the ebXML Joint Coordinating Committee and the Joint Marketing Committee during the project's transitional phase. We expect to continue to promote and support various ebXML activities, directed by our four existing OASIS ebXML TCs, the OASIS ebXML Joint Committee, and such other projects as may be initiated under OASIS rules. Indeed, there are many reasons to celebrate our ebXML accomplishments, many exciting opportunities ahead, and many ways for members to drive our continued success..."

• [August 21, 2003] "UN/CEFACT Announces Successful Completion of ebXML Technical Standards Work Programme with OASIS. UN/CEFACT Continues Development of Technology- and Implementation-Neutral E-Business Standards." - "The United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) announces the successful completion of the ebXML technical standards work with the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). UN/CEFACT continues to capitalize on the gains made from ebXML in the further development of technology-neutral and implementation-neutral global e-Business standards for government, industry and commerce. UN/CEFACT and OASIS have since 1999 been working on a joint initiative to expand the use and growth of the Internet by developing the next generation of electronic business standards based on XML (Extensible Markup Language). The ebXML (electronic Business with XML) initiative called for an 18-month worldwide open development project to create a technical framework enabling the use of XML as a consistent means for the exchange of electronic business data. The original ebXML initiative concluded in May 2001 with full community approval of a framework of technical specifications. For the past two years, UN/CEFACT and OASIS have enjoyed a close working relationship to finalize the set of ebXML specifications, and in May 2003 the UN/CEFACT Plenary adopted these as UN/CEFACT Technical Specifications. 'Working closely with our colleagues at OASIS has been a unique opportunity for UN/CEFACT to lead the development of global technology standards and help drive awareness of how XML and Internet technology support government, industry and commerce' says Ray Walker, Chair of the UN/CEFACT Steering Group. 'We are extremely proud of our OASIS working relationship and we remain open to working with OASIS in the future.' UN/CEFACT, which is based at UNECE in Geneva and has a global remit, has led the development of international standards for electronic transactions. Its experience and its ability to bring together world-class experts and match trends in information technology with business requirements, in an open and transparent way, gives it a unique viewpoint. 'Recognition that the next technology trend is just around the corner resulted in the recent UN/CEFACT Plenary meeting directing a new work programme to move UN/CEFACT closer to web services' said Dr Christian Fruhwald, Chair of UN/CEFACT. 'This new work, known as UN/CEFACT Business Collaboration Framework (BCF), will allow UN/CEFACT to identify the growing needs of government, commercial and industrial organizations as they approach their global information exchange requirements.' 'Going forward we expect to make use of much of our ebXML technical work as we continue to develop UN/CEFACT's technology neutral and implementation neutral global e-framework. We hope to use the newly established liaisons with the OASIS Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) Technical Committee (TC), plus the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) and our UN/CEFACT Techniques and Methodologies Business Process Working Group to align our efforts, and eliminate duplication of work', says Klaus-Dieter Naujok Chair of UN/CEFACT Techniques and Methodologies Group and former Chair of the ebXML Project..."

• [July 23, 2003] "Core Components and ebXML Registry." By Joseph M. Chiusano (Booz-Allen-Hamilton). Presentation to the US Federal CIO Council XML Working Group, July 23, 2003. Also in .PPT format.

• [July 14, 2003] "Thailand Links Up With Singapore Over ebXML." By Pongpen Sutharoj, Suchalee Pongprasert. In The Nation (July 14, 2003). "Thailand and Singapore are collaborating to set the standard of information interchange using ebXML to allow the two countries to do business by paperless processes. The move aims to encourage the exchange of data using ebXML in two main areas -- international trading and tourism. ebXML is the use of XML to standardise the secure exchange of business data. It is designed to create a global electronic market-place in which enterprises of any size, and in any location, can safely and securely transact business by the exchange of XML-based messages. Manoo Ordeedolachest, president of the Asian-Oceania Computing Industry Organisation (Asocio) said that the collaborating countries had set up an ebXML committee to oversee the development and define the standard of information exchange under a project called the XML industrial programme. Asocio is an ICT body which comprises 23 member countries, representing more than 10,000 ICT companies. He said that the committee had picked tourism as an industry model in the use of ebXML to do business between the countries. Singapore is working on the details of standards for data exchange. It is expected that standard will be completed before the annual Asocio meeting in Hanoi in November. In the tourism industry there are a large number of small and medium-sized businesses, but Manoo said that in the initial stage the data exchange would be used in the area of airline and hotel reservations as well as car rentals before expanding to other areas such as diving, yachts and restaurants. First adopted by Thailand and Singapore as a pilot project, the standard will be expanded to other Asocio member countries. He said that the standard would comply with the ebXML developed by the OpenTravel Alliance (OTA)... Manoo said the next step was for the committee to promote the use of the ebXML standard in international trade, allowing business to deal with government agencies paperlessly. Instead of submitting piles of documents for imports and exports, businesses could deal with, for example, the Customs Department electronically. The standard will be used as a foundation to further develop electronic government-related services in the two countries..."

• [June 26, 2003]   ebXML Registry Specifications Support Federation and Content Management Services.    The OASIS ebXML Registry Technical Committee has voted to approve the latest versions of its OASIS/ebXML Registry Services Specification v2.5 and OASIS/ebXML Registry Information Model v2.5 as Committee Specifications. The ebXML Registry "provides a set of services that enable sharing of information between interested parties for the purpose of enabling business process integration between such parties based on the ebXML specifications. The shared information is maintained as objects in a repository and managed by the ebXML Registry Services defined in this document. Such information is used to facilitate ebXML-based Business to Business (B2B) partnerships and transactions. Submitted content may be XML schema and documents, process descriptions, ebXML Core Components, context descriptions, UML models, information about parties and even software components. New enhancements and features in the Version 2.5 release include: (1) Content based event subscription and notification; (2) content management services, supporting automatic semantic content validation, automatic content cataloging, and plug-in support for user-defined content management services; (3) a distributed registry based on a federated model. The Distributed Registry includes features for federated query support, linking of content and metadata across registry boundaries, replication of content and metadata among registries, and moving of content and metadata from one registry to another as needed. Access control and authorization is based on the XACML 1.0 standard, and provides for fine-grained, or custom access control and authorization."

• [June 12, 2003]   Hong Kong CECID Donates ebMail Client Software for ebXML Message Handling.    The University of Hong Kong Center for E-Commerce Infrastructure Development (CECID) has announced the release of its ebMail code base to the ebXML development community under an open source Academic Free License. ebMail is "a desktop e-mail client which helps organizations, small-and-medium-sized enterprises (SME) in particular, to engage in B2B e-commerce activities. This lightweight toolkit enables trading partners to exchange business documents cost-effectively through email, or ebXML Message Service (ebMS) over Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP). ebMail is a trimmed-down ebMS handler which does not require any application server software and dedicated Internet connection to use ebXML. It allows a user to compose electronic documents offline through graphical user interface (GUI), and send and receive documents when the user is connected to the Internet. ebMail employs plug-in modules to provide different graphical user interface (GUI) forms for capturing business data into different schemas of XML documents (e.g., price quotation, purchase order, invoice, etc.) and binary file attachments (e.g., PDF, graphics, etc.). These plug-ins can load, save, and manipulate business data in the local file system, as well as import documents from office applications to the GUI for efficient document handling. ebMail plug-ins can also handle simple business processes that define choreographies of document exchanges."

• [June 03, 2003] "UN/CEFACT Plenary Endorses Latest ebXML Specifications." - "International standards bodies OASIS and UN/CEFACT today announced that the latest completed versions of ebXML specifications have been endorsed by the 2003 Plenary session of UN/CEFACT meeting in Geneva. The United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business endorsed the adoption of ebXML global standards for exchanging business messages, establishing trading relationships, communicating data in common terms and defining and registering business processes. Seven components of ebXML were reviewed and endorsed by the Plenary including the OASIS Open Standards: ebXML Message Service Specification v2.0; ebXML Registry Information Model v2.0; ebXML Registry Services Specification v2.0; and the ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement v2.0; as well as the ebXML Business Process Specification Schema v1.01 now managed by UN/CEFACT, and the jointly managed ebXML Technical Architecture v1.04 and the ebXML Requirements v1.06. 'We are proud that the UN/CEFACT Plenary has added another level of international endorsement to the four ebXML specifications which are OASIS Open Standards,' noted Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. Ray Walker, chair of the UN/CEFACT Steering Group added, 'The endorsement of the UN/CEFACT Plenary is another milestone for ebXML. It demonstrates conclusively that ebXML has begun to fulfill its promise to make e-business possible for any company or organization anywhere in the world. It also paves the way for the development of a formal UN recommendation to governments and to inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations on the use of ebXML in their eBusiness exchanges'..."

• [June 03, 2003] "Iopsis Unveils Web Services Assembly Product for ebXML and Business Process Orchestration. Iopsis iNsight Provides Architecture and Modeling Tools for Web Services Applications." - "Iopsis Software, an innovator in production grade Web services development tools and infrastructure, today announced version 2.1 of its iNsight application assembly product. Iopsis iNsight is the industry's first tool that lets developers use standard UML notation to define and orchestrate Web services, and it has pioneering support for OASIS ebBPSS and BPEL4WS modeling. Working as a supplement to the Sun ONE Studio and NetBeans Integrated Development Environments from Sun Microsystems, Iopsis iNsight provides modeling, code generation, choreography, and assembly of Web services for use in business processes and end-user applications. 'Iopsis's iNsight 2.1 is an ideal complement to Sun ONE Studio 4 Enterprise Edition for Java, providing a complete platform for businesses to rapidly develop enterprise class Web services applications,' said Ashwin Rao, Senior Product Manager for SunONE Studio... Iopsis iNsight allows developers to rapidly assemble Web services from existing Java code. Unlike previous tools that blindly generate WSDL and XML from low-level Java interfaces, iNsight helps developers use rich business logic interfaces (e.g., 'reserve inventory') in long-running Web services transactions. 'Until now, tools generated WSDL files that merely reflected internal interfaces that were often useless for application-level contracts,' said Rajesh Pradhan, CTO of Iopsis. 'Iopsis iNsight works at a higher level and automatically handles versioning, object naming and interoperability issues, creating Web services that are useful in a real business context.' Iopsis will be showcasing iNsight in booth 406 at San Francisco's JavaOne next week. The demonstrations will show modeling Web services interfaces, choreographing their actions in long-running business processes, and deploying working applications to the standard environments of .NET, Apache and J2EE's JaxRPC... Iopsis iNsight has always worked as a seamless extension to the SunONE Studio IDE, providing ease of use and automation to Java developers working in Web services. iNsight has added a series of packs that lower the costs and time involved with developing Web services applications: (1) Foundation Pack: The core components that extend the SunONE IDE with new windows and code generators for XML and WSDL, plus functionality for repurposing existing software assets in SAP R/3 and XML data sources. (2) Basic Pack: Creates Web Service Interfaces that conform to the WS-I Basic profile, extending the IDE capabilities with UML based modeling of WSDL interfaces. (3) Orchestration Pack: Creates choreography interfaces based on BPEL4WS 1.1 and ebXML BPSS 1.05 modeling, facilitating deployment to IBM's BPWS4J, Collaxa's Orchestration server, and ebMSH 2.0-compliant servers. (4) Mobile Access Pack: The Configuration and deployment tools for wireless web service applications using the Iopsis iNfinite multi-channel application framework... Iopsis iNsight 2.1 will be available for free download, evaluation and purchase in June 2003 at www.iopsis.com. iNsight runs on Solaris 8 + 9, Windows 2000 + XP, and RedHat Linux 7. Iopsis iNsight 2.1 is typically $1000-2000 per developer seat, depending on the number of packs used..."

• [May 26, 2003] "Government to Set Up ebXML-RosettaNet Link." By Kim Joon-bae. In Korea IT Times (May 20, 2003). "Two next-generation international e-commerce standards, 'ebXML' and 'RosettaNet,' will soon become interoperable, allowing the nation to take a leading role in linking the two mainstay standards on the global level. The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said on May 18, 2003 that it would make concerted efforts with the Korea Institute for Electronic Commerce, an organization leading ebXML development, and RosettaNet Korea to develop an adapter used to link the two standards. The decision came after a meeting organized by RosettaNet Korea and attended by MOCIE and KIEC, and the project will become a part of the 'RosettaNet-ebXML link plan' proposed by RosettaNet. Once the adapter is completed, firms in the electronics and electrics industries using RosettaNet will be able to engage in e-commerce activities with firms poised to adopt ebXML, which is in a final development stage before commercial use. Given the fact that ebXML is a global e-commerce standard and RosettaNet has established a foothold as an industry standard at home, interoperability between the two standards will contribute significantly to boosting the nation's role in link on the global level... The ministry's decision is expected to give sense of stability to firms using RosettaNet by enabling interoperability with the fast-spreading international standard ebXML. It will also likely serve as a catalyst for adoption of ebXML in the electronics and electrics industries. The government has been providing full support for adoption of ebXML even before a commercial launch, citing its general-purpose use across a full variety of industries... 'Interoperability will not lead to immediate effects since ebXML is still in a development stage, but the decision carries significance in that the government has begun to provide support for RosettaNet, which is fast spreading into the electronics and electrics areas,' said Prof. Kim Sun-ho at Myungji University..."

• [May 23, 2003] "ebXML Applications Demonstrated Live at London Conference." - "The XML Europe 2003 Conference showcased two days of live ebXML demonstrations and presentations that tackled demanding real-life business needs, to an overflow audience each day.Highlighting the event, a group of five technology companies -- XT-I, Seeburger AG, Sun Microsystems, Sonic Software, TIE International -- representing the e-Business Board for European Standardization, in association with OASIS, demonstrated ebXML messaging in real-life steel industry business scenarios. The business cases, supplied by the European steel industry e-marketplace Steel24-7, showed transactions with XML and EDI business payloads sent and received by different vendors' systems using the ebXML Messaging Services protocol. In each case the systems exchanging the data integrated the payloads into simulated corporate databases. The demonstrations showed that ebXML can routinely handle the rigorous requirements of high-performance business under realistic conditions. In one demonstration, the participants even took one of the systems out of service interrupting the transaction, but the message remained in persistent storage -- a key requirement of ebXML messaging -- which allowed the message to go through once the system came back online. The event featured several case studies of current business uses of ebXML including: the telecommunications industry in the U.K. (Martin Roberts, BT), the container shipping industry in India (Visva Visvanathan, Indian Institute of Science), a travel industry global distribution system in the U.S. (Mike Wheaton, Sun Microsystems), General Motors (Dan Malks, Sun Microsystems), and the international paper industry (Tilo Zimmermann, Ponton Consulting). The program also discussed innovative applications and extensions of the ebXML architecture, including: the European openXchange project (Erwin Folmer and Dennis Krukkert, TNO E-business), an open-source implementation of the ebXML registry specifications (Farrukh Najmi, Sun Microsystems), Content Assembly Mechanism (David Webber, SmartDraw), ebXML Test Framework (Jacques Durand, Fujitsu), ebXML Test Centers (Monica Martin, Sun Microsystems), and interoperability of ebXML messaging (Rik Drummond, Drummond Group). Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS who gave the welcoming address to the conference participants said, "The ebXML Showcase illustrated that these specifications are for real, and delivering solid business value for companies large and small... The demonstrations and cases discussed at the conference should erase any doubt that the ebXML framework can provide the reliability, security, and flexibility companies need to do e-business in the 21st century'..."

• [May 21, 2003] "Yellow Dragon Announces the General Availability of Yellow Dragon Messaging 1.0. Secure and Reliable Messaging for Web Services and ebXML." - "Yellow Dragon Software Corporation, a developer of key messaging and metadata management software for Service Oriented Architectures (SOA's), including ebXML and Web Services, announced today the general availability of Yellow Dragon Messaging version 1.0, its ebXML Messaging Services v2.0 compliant messaging platform. Yellow Dragon Messaging 1.0 supports all mandatory and optional features of the ebXML Messaging 2.0c specification, as well as Collaboration Protocol Agreements, version 2.0. The software has been certified interoperable with 12 other software vendors under under another name. The software makes secure and reliable messaging for web services a reality. This is a "must have" requirement for many web service users. Yellow Dragon Software's offers the product for a free evaluation period along with a new Messaging Server Management console to make it easy to get up and running. Yellow Dragon Software has experienced a high degree of serious interest from value added resellers who appear to agree that this ebXML-based messaging solution is a needed commodity. The business community has been applying pressure to web services vendors to offer this functionality. Now anyone can download and have it running in less than 30 minutes... Yellow Dragon Software provides messaging and metadata management software for Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs), including ebXML, Web Services and others. Yellow Dragon is an active member of the ebXML community, and several of its personnel are prominent participants in the standardization activities within the W3C, OASIS, UN/CEFACT and OAG..."

• [May 16, 2003]   OASIS TC Approves Test Framework Documents for ebXML Messaging Service (ebMS) Version 2.0.    The OASIS ebXML Implementation, Interoperability and Conformance (IIC) Technical Committee has announced the approval of four committee specifications for use in conformance testing with ebXML Messaging Service (ebMS) version 2.0. "The initial ebXML IIC efforts have focused on providing a computable and extensible test framework with ebMS as the first edition of the suite of test specifications. Plans are under consideration for CPP/A (Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement), Business Process Specification Schema (BPSS) and Registry/Repository (Reg/Rep). The Test Framework can be used to support conformance testing and interoperability testing in different configurations, from point-to-point testing between business partners, to centralized configurations involving a test center. eBusiness partners can download necessary components. Tests can be driven either by one of the partners, or by a test center, which can be viewed as a service. Or, for interoperability tests, a test center can be used as a hub, providing monitoring and routing functions, while tests are driven from an end-point. In both cases, the test will be executed in an automated fashion. Test traces and results are generated for a collection of test (test suites) for later review." The approved committee specification documents include ebXML Test Framework Document, Version 1.0, ebXML Messaging 2.0 Basic Interoperability Profile (BIP) Test Suite, version 1.0, ebXML Deployment Guide Template for ebXML Messaging 2.0, Version 1.0, and EAN.UCC (European Article Numbering / Uniform Code Council) Deployment Guide 1.0, an instance of the ebXML Messaging Deployment Template 1.0.

• [May 07, 2003] "Registering Web Services in an ebXML Registry." By Joseph M. Chiusano (Booz Allen Hamilton) and Farrukh Najmi (Sun Microsystems). Prepared for the OASIS ebXML Registry Technical Committee. Technical Note. Version 1.0. 12-March-2003, updated May 7, 2003. 16 pages. A posting from TC Chair Kathryn Breininger (Boeing Library Services) declares that this document is an approved Technical Note. "This document describes the current best practice for registering Web services in an ebXML Registry. It conforms to the following specifications: [1] OASIS/ebXML Registry Information Model (ebRIM) v3.0, release pending; [2] OASIS/ebXML Registry Services Specification (ebRS), v3.0, release pending... An ebXML Registry provides a stable store where information submitted by a Submitting Organization is made persistent. Such information is used to facilitate ebXML-based Business to Business (B2B) partnerships and transactions. Submitted content may be XML schema and documents, process descriptions, Web services, ebXML Core Components, context descriptions, UML models, information about parties and even software components. The purpose of this document is to provide a Best Practice for registering Web services and their associated entities in an ebXML Registry... The characteristics, capabilities, and requirements of a Web service can be described and published, thereby enabling automatic discovery and invocation of the service. One mechanism by which these descriptions can be published is in an ebXML Registry. The most common mechanism for describing Web services today is the Web Services Description Language, or WSDL; however, the Service description that is registered can be in any format such as OASIS/ebXML Collaboration-Protocol Profile and Agreement (CPP/A) or the emerging DAML-S. A Web service can be represented in an ebXML Registry through several Registry Information Model classes: Service, ServiceBinding, and SpecificationLink. Service instances are RegistryEntry instances that provide information on services (e.g. Web services)... ServiceBinding instances are RegistryObject instances that represent technical information on a specific way to access a specific interface offered by a Service instance. A Service has a collection of ServiceBindings... A SpecificationLink provides the linkage between a ServiceBinding and one of its technical specifications that describes how to use the service with that ServiceBinding. For example, a ServiceBinding may have a specific SpecificationLink instance that describes how to access the service using a technical specification (such as a WSDL document)..." XML Schemas and sample XML instances are provided for these classes. Extended scenarios are discussed in section 5; they include Versioning of Web Services, Associating a Web Service with an Organization, Associating a Web Service with an Access Control Policy, Registering a Service Description that is External to the Registry, Web Service Redirection, and Customizing Metadata Using Slots. [source .DOC]

• [March 27, 2003] "OASIS and UN/CEFACT to Host ebXML Showcase at XML Europe 2003 in London. Conference Will Highlight ebXML Implementations Around the World." - "International standards bodies, OASIS and UN/CEFACT, will host the ebXML Showcase in London, 5-6 May 2003. Highlighting the growing use of Electronic Business XML (ebXML) in a range of industries as well as ebXML's role in Web services, the two-day event will be held in conjunction with IDEAlliance's XML Europe 2003 conference. The ebXML Showcase is designed for developers and business managers worldwide with an interest in ebXML's modular suite of specifications for conducting business over the Internet. The event will feature answers to real-life questions of adopting the UN/CEFACT and OASIS ebXML standards for exchanging business messages, establishing trading relationships, communicating data in common terms and defining and registering business processes. Attendees will also hear about the business benefits of managing electronic commerce through ebXML from existing ebXML end users and software suppliers. Keynote presentations from Paul Murphy of the European Commission, Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS, and Ray Walker, chair of the UN/CEFACT Steering Group, will be featured at the ebXML Showcase. The program will also include updates from ebXML users in the telecommunications, shipping, publishing, manufacturing, and e-commerce industries. Representatives of the United Nations, Fujitsu, NIST, SeeBeyond, Sun Microsystems, and others will present. 'ebXML adoption around the world has been steadily building, and some of the most pervasive and exciting applications are being implemented in Europe,' said Patrick Gannon. 'The London Showcase will offer industry organizations and business users the chance to learn more about planning, integrating, and implementing various combinations of the ebXML specifications in practical business scenarios. The program will explore how ebXML is being used to facilitate Web services with the support of global product vendors and the backing of major standards-setting bodies.' Ray Walker added, 'We are very pleased that the ebXML specifications will be submitted to the UN/CEFACT plenary immediately following the ebXML Showcase. This should pave the way for a UN recommendation to industry, commerce and governments on the use of ebXML.' The ebXML Showcase will feature a presentation by the European ebXML interoperability pilot project (CEN/ISSS eBES Vendor Forum), demonstrating interoperable implementations of the ebXML Messaging OASIS Open Standard in a real-life use case scenario. The demo will employ e-business integration scenarios from an ebXML application currently being used within the steel industry..."

• [March 18, 2003] "The ebXML Messaging Service." By Pim van der Eijk. From WebServices.XML.com (March 18, 2003). "The ebXML Messaging Service specification (ebMS) extends the SOAP specification to provide the security and reliability features required by many production enterprise and e-business applications. As an OASIS Open standard, ebMS is a mature specification, supported by a variety of commercial and open source software implementations. The interoperability of many of these implementations has been demonstrated in a number of ongoing projects internationally. This makes ebMS a strong complement or even alternative to other web service specifications... In this article we examine a specification that deserves serious attention in this context, namely, the the ebXML Messaging Service specification (ebMS). ebMS, endorsed in August 2002 as an OASIS standard, adds security and reliability extensions to SOAP and aligns e-business messaging with other e-business integration standards (like trading partner agreements and business process specification). After three years of development, ebMS has become a mature specification. While it is designed to support the ebXML framework, ebMS is a standalone specification that can be used independently of other ebXML specifications. Prospective users evaluating message service or web services technology have a choice of commerical and open source implementations of ebMS, many of which have been verified for interoperability in implementation pilots... The OASIS Implementation, Interoperability and Conformance TC addresses the requirements for ebXML interoperability, with an initial practical focus on ebMS. The committee is chartered to provide a conformance plan, a set of reference implementation guidelines, a set of base line interoperability tests, and guidelines and direction for third-party creation of conformance laboratories. Many participants in this TC are also active in other interoperability projects. One of the deliverables of this TC is a test framework that allows automation of interoperability testing of ebMS implementations. The ebXML IIC is currently finalizing its Basic Interoperability test suite, which aims at bringing together the various ebMS interoperability test initiatives, thus providing a common interoperability platform. The IIC has also developed the concept of a Deployment Template, first developed for ebXML Messaging. This is an important tool in defining interoperability at the business or usage level. It has been used by EAN-UCC to specify its deployment and implementation guidelines (which include the use of GLN mentioned earlier) in a more systematic way, which is easier to map to ebMS requirements, for users and vendors..."

• [January 30, 2003] "Fourteen Software Products Certified eBusinessReady for ebXML Messaging Interoperability. Interoperability Certified Software Facilitates Implementation and Saves Costs." - "eBusinessReady, an industry-neutral software compliance and interoperability testing program under joint partnership of the Uniform Code Council, Inc. (UCC) and Drummond Group, Inc. (DGI), announced today that software products from 11 leading solution providers successfully completed the program's ebXML Messaging 2.0 interoperability testing. A total of 14 software products were certified eBusinessReady. Companies demonstrating interoperability among their products included bTrade, inc., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Cyclone Commerce, Fujitsu, IPNet Solutions, Inc., Sonic Software, Sterling Commerce, Inc., Sun Microsystems, Sybase, Inc., TIBCO Software, Inc., and XML Global Technologies. Sun Microsystems funded testing scholarships for several of the participants. An eBusinessReady certified product enables vertical and horizontal interoperability across the supply chain and distribution channels. ebXML Messaging is a key standard that enables web services, providing secure and reliable messaging for B2B communications. The companies underwent testing to demonstrate that their ebXML messaging software products complied with a common level of interoperability, enabling them to effectively communicate with other eBusiness solutions, eliminating costly communication obstacles and facilitating efficient trading partner relationships..."

• [January 23, 2003] "eBusinessReady Program Certifies 35 Software Products in First Year. Program Launches Certification Seal and Website." - "eBusinessReady, an industry-neutral software compliance and interoperability testing program under joint partnership of the Uniform Code Council, Inc. (UCC) and Drummond Group, Inc. (DGI), announced today it has certified 35 products since its launch in November 2001. The products were certified to support AS1 and AS2 EDI/XML messaging over the Internet, VICS Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR), or ebXML messaging V2.0 standards. The UCC, a not-for-profit standards organization, is the founding sponsor of eBusinessReady, which provides the foundation for driving interoperability testing of multiple, standard compliant software products. DGI facilitates and manages the software testing for the eBusinessReady program. Enterprises and supply chains are increasingly demanding tested software solutions and the eBusinessReady program delivers a neutral third party to assess global interoperability. 'eBusinessReady has received an overwhelming response within the industry during its launch year,' said Michael Di Yeso, executive vice president and COO of the UCC. 'A certified product enables companies to more easily interface with the systems of their customers and partners and save the costs associated with implementing incompatible supply chain solutions. eBusinessReady helps software users simplify the procurement process and provides them with a selection of interoperable software products that meet their needs for price point and feature sets'... The program also unveiled the eBusinessReady certification seal and its website. The eBusinessReady seal informs software buyers that a solution has been tested and certified to ensure seamless interoperability across industries on a global scale. The program's website, located at www.ebusinessready.org, provides a comprehensive resource for software vendors and buyers, and features updated reports about the program and certification. An eBusinessReady certified product enables multiple software solutions to interact seamlessly for improved supply chain performance. The program brings together software vendors, exchanges, vertical industries and the standards community in a neutral, standards-based testing environment that simulates real-world operating conditions..." See: (1) "Uniform Code Council (UCC) XML Program";(2) "VICS CPFR XML Messaging Standard."

• [January 16, 2003] "XML Global Introduces Security and Reliability for e-Business Web Services. GoXML Messaging leverages ebXML technologies to provide advanced reliability and security features for Web services deployments." - "XML Global Technologies, Inc., an XML middleware company, announced the release of GoXML Messaging 3.0. GoXML Messaging is a secure and reliable SOAP-based messaging system that supports the industry standard ebXML Messaging Specification 2.0. ebXML is a suite of e-business standards sponsored by OASIS and the UN/CEFACT. Gartner analyst Jess Thompson has stated that 'ebXML Messaging is the crown jewel of the ebXML specification suite.' GoXML Messaging 3.0 has been successfully certified in the current round of Drummond Group ebXML Messaging 2.0 interoperability tests sponsored by the Uniform Code Council, Inc. (UCC). GoXML Messaging 3.0 addresses the issue of Web services security, which Pacific Data Works analyst Andrew Binstock says is 'the biggest obstacle to exposing Web services to defined groups or the public'. In his recent Software Development Times article Binstock adds, '[The issue of] Security, of course, appears even with internal applications, such as intranets.' GoXML Messaging now empowers businesses to publish Web services that offer security guarantees for business documents such as invoices, health records and digital images... Unlike other messaging systems that typically require additional proprietary server software, GoXML Messaging is designed to operate as a lightweight web application or as a small-footprint embeddable software component. This enables existing applications to engage in secure and reliable document exchanges over intranets and the Internet. Key features of GoXML Messaging 3.0 include: (1) certified for ebXML Message Service 2.0 interoperability; (2) support for ebXML CPA 2.0 trading partner agreements; (3) persistent message storage to guarantee reliable messaging; (4) an easy-to-use Java API. With the release of GoXML Messaging 3.0 XML Global adds further depth to its suite of business integration components, which include GoXML Transform, a data transformation engine, and GoXML Registry, a metadata registry based on the ebXML specification..."

• [December 19, 2002]   UN/CEFACT ebXML Core Components Technical Specification Approved for Implementation Verification.    The UN/CEFACT Techniques and Methodology Group (TMG) recently approved the version 1.90 UN/CEFACT ebXML Core Components Technical Specification for Step 6 'Implementation Verification' as defined in the UN/CEFACT/TRADE/22 Open Development Process for Technical Specifications. The Step 6 verification review period "is the most critical part of the development process as problems and issues are identified; the editing group collects the problems and issues identified from the implementors in order to further refine and improve the specification." According to a posting from Mark Crawford, Editor of the UN/CEFACT Core Components specification, "the OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL), OAG, EAN-UCC, SWIFT, UN/CEFACT, ANSI ASC X12, and a host of other standards organizations are already using this new [Core Components] approach as the basis for building interoperable XML business standards; the Department of the Navy has included aspects of this specification in its XML Developers Guide, and it is referenced in the Federal XML Developers Guide as well." CCTS addresses the "lack of information interoperability between applications in the e-business arena. Traditionally, standards for the exchange of business data have been focused on static message definitions that have not enabled a sufficient degree of interoperability or flexibility. CCTS seeks to define a flexible and interoperable way of standardizing Business Semantics. The UN/CEFACT ebXML Core Component solution described in the CCTS specification presents a methodology for developing a common set of semantic building blocks that represent the general types of business data in use today and provides for the creation of new business vocabularies and restructuring of existing business vocabularies."

• [December 03, 2002]   ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement 2.0 Approved as OASIS Open Standard.    OASIS announced that its members have voted to approve the ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement (CPPA) Version 2.0 as an OASIS Open Standard. TC Chair Dale Moberg (Cyclone Commerce) said: "ebXML CPPA ensures interoperability between two parties, even organizations that use software from different sources. The CPP defines a party's message-exchange capabilities and the business collaborations that it supports. The CPA defines the way two business parties will interact in performing the chosen business collaborations." According to Brian Gibb (Sterling Commerce) the specification "addresses a major issue with the rapid deployment of Internet B2B e-commerce -- the absence of a standard definition of technical parameters for communication and security that business partners need to agree upon. Representing these configuration parameters in the standard format of the ebXML CPPA specification will greatly accelerate users' integration processes. In addition to this immediate value, version 2.0 of the specification sets the stage for the standardized CPA negotiation process to come." The OASIS technical commmittee was chartered to continue the work of ebXML on Collaboration Protocol Profiles (CPPs) and Collaboration Protocol Agreements (CPAs).

• [December 02, 2002] "ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement Ratified as OASIS Open Standard. New Version of OASIS UN/CEFACT Work Enables E-Business Collaboration." - "The OASIS interoperability consortium today announced that its members have approved the ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement (CPPA) v2.0 as an OASIS Open Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. ebXML CPPA defines business partners' technical capabilities and documents agreements between partners, enabling organizations to securely engage in electronic business collaboration... 'ebXML CPPA ensures interoperability between two parties, even organizations that use software from different sources. The CPP defines a party's message-exchange capabilities and the business collaborations that it supports. The CPA defines the way two business parties will interact in performing the chosen business collaborations,' explained Dale Moberg of Cyclone Commerce, chair of the OASIS ebXML CPPA Technical Committee. 'The OASIS Open Standard also facilitates the migration of both traditional EDI-based applications and other legacy applications to ebXML-based platforms.' ebXML CPPA was developed by Commerce One, Cyclone Commerce, E2open, Hewlett-Packard Company, IBM, Intel, IONA, Mercator, SAP, SeeBeyond, Sterling Commerce, Sun Microsystems, Sybase, TIBCO, Vitria, webMethods, and other members of the OASIS ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement Technical Committee... In related news, the ebXML OASIS UN/CEFACT Joint Marketing Team published version 1.0 of the ebXML Adoption Update, a listing of ebXML implementations, projects, products, and industry initiatives from around the world..." See: (1) OASIS ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement TC; (2) "The Significance of CPPA v2," by Jon Bosak.

• [November 25, 2002] "The Significance of CPPA v2." By Jon Bosak. Posting to 'ebxml-dev' list 2002-11-23. "With the approval of ebXML CPPA v2 as an OASIS Standard this month, I think it would be useful to reflect for a moment on the significance of this milestone for ebXML and for electronic commerce in general. The standardization of OASIS ebXML CPPA v2 is of epochal importance for two reasons. First, the technology itself is central to the XML realization of the EDI trading model and, beyond that, to the implementation of large-scale B2B projects in general... The second reason that CPPA v2 will be of central importance for B2B has to do with the status of the intellectual property related to its implementation. ... [an IBM] patent [#6,148,290] covers features that might be essential to the implementation of a wide variety of ecommerce systems, not just ebXML. It's significant, therefore, that in May 2002, IBM promised to grant royalty-free licenses to all IBM patents required by CPPA v1 and v2 and committed to continue providing RF licenses for subsequent versions of CPPA. [See:] REF-1, REF-2, REF-3. The royalty-free license was later extended to open-source software as well. Much has been made of the fact that CPPA v2 still cannot be considered completely unencumbered, but it remains, to my knowledge, the only application of the technology covered by the relevant IBM patents that IBM has publicly pledged to license royalty-free. The practical effect of this as far as I can see is to make ebXML the only TPA-based B2B ecommerce framework that can be implemented without incurring a future obligation to pay royalties to IBM for the TPA component..."

• [November 15, 2002] "ebXML Adoption Update." From the OASIS ebXML Awareness Team. November 2002. 17 pages. An update reporting on ebXML implementations. "ebXML (Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup Language), sponsored by UN/CEFACT and OASIS, is a modular suite of specifications that enables enterprises of any size and in any geographical location to conduct business over the Internet. Using ebXML, companies now have a standard method to exchange business messages, conduct trading relationships, communicate data in common terms and define and register business processes." Executive Summary: "The OASIS ebXML Awareness Team has brought together the information in this document in collaboration with OASIS member organizations and UN/CEFACT partners to give a wide-ranging picture of the adoption of ebXML today. The original technical specification work on ebXML was completed and made public in May of 2001, and subsequent work is now continuing between OASIS and UN/CEFACT jointly on further developing and enhancing the original specifications. Major vendors have developed ebXML support into their flagship products along with new vendors who are providing unique ebXML capabilities and implementations of the specifications. Key industry sectors and government entities are deploying new eBusiness applications that are serving as benchmarks in the adoption of ebXML globally. Our aim with this document is to show decision makers how ebXML is developing today, and how they too can gain critical advantage for their businesses and partners by implementing ebXML both for their established systems and also to solve previously difficult business needs through the technology that ebXML provides. No truly successful technology today is an island, so what is also important is to see how ebXML is adapting, evolving and growing through deployment into real world situations. Over 2,000 people contributed to the original ebXML development efforts, and now those continuing efforts are being augmented by projects showing how ebXML is being used in tandem with other technologies such as web services and XML as a whole. Seeing how industry groups and standards bodies are working to bring their vocabularies into alignment around ebXML is also the beginnings of a new level of interoperability that the industry as a whole has been seeking for more than a decade. The projects and implementations described here are truly groundbreaking and exciting in how they are delivering on the promise of ebXML and advancing and improving eBusiness worldwide..." [cache]

• [November 04, 2002] Online XENI ebXML RegRep Hosting Service by KTNET. posting from Chaemee Kim announces a XENI Registry/Repository compliant with ebXML RIM 2.1 and RS 2.1. "The XENI (eXtensible ENterprise Integration) Web Registry Client [XENI MSH v2.0] provides not just MSH library, but also adaptors for legacy integration and console based on ebXML MS v2.0. Supported Reg/Rep Classification Schemes include GXMLHub (Global XML Hub for GXML Hub's members), GXML (Global XML, the business document standard for XML and EDI community), UNSPSC, VCML (Value Chain Markup Language), and EDI (Electronic Data Interchange)." For more information, see the download page and the FAQ.

• [October 25, 2002]   Sun Secure Trading Agent Technology Preview Supports ebXML MS and CPA.    Sun Microsystems has announced a Technology Preview for the Sun ONE Integration Server Secure Trading Agent (STA). STA Version 1.0 Beta "implements a standards-based, secure, reliable system that provides for the exchange of business documents between trading partners, according to an agreement between the trading partners. This support for electronic business transactions is based on emerging ebXML standards, which are geared toward helping small to medium-sized companies use the Internet for conducting business transactions with their trading partners. This version supports both the ebXML Message Service Specification v2.0 and ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement Specification v2.0. This Beta release of Secure Trading Agent enforces the following security measures specified in an ebXML agreement: (1) Transport Security: Security measures for the transport of ebXML messages, including business documents attached to the message. Transport security can be implemented using a combination of secure transport protocols (such as SSL), digital certificates, and digital signatures. (2) Document Security: The encryption and digital signing of business documents attached to an ebXML message, providing measures for authentication, data integrity, and confidentiality. (3) Authorization: Verification by Secure Trading Agent that persons acting in roles for parties are authorized to perform those roles. Authorization of user roles is not implemented in the Beta release of Secure Trading Agent. (4) Nonrepudiation: A guarantee that a message arrives and also a guarantee of the contents of the message. Nonrepudiation includes being able to provide a history of transactions for auditing purposes and proof of delivery for each transaction." [Full context]

• [October 01, 2002]   UN/CEFACT Releases ebXML Core Component Technical Specification for Second Public Review.    A posting from Hartmut Hermes (UN/CEFACT Core Component Project Team Lead) and Klaus-Dieter Naujok (Techniques and Methodologies Group Chair) announces the release of the UN/CEFACT - ebXML Core Component Technical Specification Version 1.85 for Public Review provided by its Open Development Process. Under the UN/CEFACT Open Development Process, all interested parties have the opportunity to review, comment on, and contribute to Technical Specifications. The public review period ends 22-November-2002. The ebXML Core Component solution described in the specification "presents a methodology for developing a common set of semantic building blocks that represent the general types of business data in use today and provides for the creation of new business vocabularies and restructuring of existing business vocabularies. The Core Components User Community consists of business people, business document modellers and business data modellers, Business Process modellers, and application developers of different organisations that require interoperability of business information. This interoperability covers both interactive and batch exchanges of business data between applications through the use of Internet and Web based information exchanges as well as traditional Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) systems." [Full context]

• [October 01, 2002] "Cross Industry ebXML Interoperability Flourishes. 12 Leading Vendors participate in ebXML Message Service Testing." - "Drummond Group, Inc. (DGI), a vendor neutral consultancy and leader in software interoperability testing, today announced the launch of the second ebXML messaging interoperability test with twelve participating vendors. The test is sponsored under the Uniform Code Council Inc. Interoperability Compliance Program and uses the Drummond Group Interoperability Compliance Processes. The testing is being done for ebXML Message Service specification v 2.0, which is the most current version. Participating organizations include bTrade, inc., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Cyclone Commerce, eXcelon Corporation, Fujitsu Limited, Global eXchange Services, IPNet Solutions, Inc., Sun Microsystems, Sybase, Inc., Sterling Commerce, TIBCO Software Inc. and XML Global Technologies, Inc. Sun Microsystems funded testing scholarships for several of the participants... ebXML Messaging v 2.0 is a key international standard that enables secure and reliable messaging in a Web service model. ebXML Message Service v 2.0 facilitates the secure transmission of transaction data from one party to another either directly or through intermediaries, such as e-marketplaces and exchanges. Drummond Group Inc. had earlier this year donated their ebXML Messaging v 2.0 test suites from the first round of testing to jumpstart the efforts of the OASIS ebXML Implementation, Interoperability and Conformance Technical Committee (IIC). The IIC has been working diligently this year to develop a broad set of guidelines and conformance specifications to ensure that ebXML interoperability across industries exists on a global scale..." See also the earlier announcement: "ebXML Messaging V2.0 Interoperability Test Starts June 2002 -- Call for Participation. Drummond Group and the OASIS ebXML IIC Coordinate the Use of the Test Suite."

• [October 16, 2002] "STEEL24-7 Facilitates Online Steel Business with ebXML Messaging Based on the webMethods Integration Platform. Electronic Business XML Standard Enables Steel Buyers and Suppliers to Better Link Systems." - "webMethods, Inc., the leading provider of integration software, today [2002=10-14] announced that STEEL24-7, the e-business platform for the steel industry, has leveraged the webMethods integration platform and its out-of- the-box support for ebXML to provide buyers and suppliers with an open, standards-based architecture for automating the global supply chain. Both STEEL24-7 and webMethods have taken the lead in promoting the adoption of ebXML standards for messaging over the Internet in the steel industry. STEEL24-7 is a European platform for the steel industry founded by Arcelor, Corus and ThyssenKrupp Steel. The company operates a communications hub for buyers and suppliers in the steel industry. By implementing the webMethods integration platform, STEEL24-7 can automate supply chain processes by enabling buyers and suppliers to seamlessly connect back-end ERP systems and communicate in real time... With the capability to automatically convert messages, STEEL24-7 can support communication between business partners using different messaging standards and formats. In particular, STEEL24-7 can offer translation services between EDI and XML messages, thus giving buyers and suppliers the ability to leverage existing IT investments. webMethods supports STEEL24-7's vision of becoming the premier global communications hub for the steel industry by providing a comprehensive integration platform that enables a variety of customers, suppliers and partners to streamline business transactions through direct, real-time communication. With the webMethods integration platform, STEEL24-7 can now offer members a solution for rapid and efficient connection to the hub and easy adoption of new message standards and formats. STEEL24-7 uses the XML and EDIFACT document standards specified by EUROFER, the European Confederation of Iron and Steel Industries, based on the ebXML and UN/CEFACT standardization work. Initially, STEEL24-7 will support the key messages involved in the ordering and delivery business processes. Based on the progress made with EUROFER, further messages and message translation capabilities will be incorporated into the hub infrastructure on an ongoing basis..." See: "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)."

• [September 28, 2002] A posting from Maarten Steen of the Telematica Instituut announces an online ebXML Demonstrator which shows how ebXML works. "It shows how companies will find each other, propose and complete business transactions in an automated way. During the demonstration the viewer learns about the different components in ebXML and their position in the ebXML framework. Therefore this demonstrator should rather be called an explanator... One of the major efforts is the ebXML proposition: to create a common e-business infrastructure with a coherent set of standards for messaging, core components, and processes... The goal of the demonstrator is not merely to demonstrate the concepts of ebXML, but rather to demonstrate in general what infrastructure is necessary to realize the visionary dream of fully automated e-business. Moreover, it aims at provoking discussions on what business decisions and opportunities remain in this automated world, hence pinpointing the essence of future (e-)business...." See the posting.

• [September 14, 2002]   freebXML Initiative Supports Open Source ebXML Implementations: Message Service Handler (MSH) and Registry/Repository.    A posting from Thomas Lee (CECID) announces the formation of a new 'freebXML' initiative that aims to foster the development and adoption of ebXML and related technologies. freebXML is an international effort comprising of founding members from technology firms, government organizations, standardization bodies, and academic institutions. The mission of freebXML is to provide a centralized Website for ebXML users and developers from around the world to access and share 'free' ebXML code and applications. Users and developers can also exchange their ebXML development and deployment experience at www.freebXML.org. Some features of www.freebxml.org include 'open source' projects for download, deployment or use cases of ebXML technology, a list of ebXML vendor products, latest news on freebXML, and discussion forums for developers and users. Access to www.freebxml.org is free of charge and open to all individuals and organizations interested in ebXML. Initially, two 'open-source' projects are available for download: Hermes and ebxmlrr. Hermes is a Message Service Handler (MSH) implementation of OASIS' ebXML Message Service V2 Standard. ebxmlrr is an implementation of the ebXML Registry/Repository V2 Standard. Donated to the ebXML development community by CECID, Hermes is released under the Academic Free License. ebxmlrr, hosted at SourceForge, is an international collaboration with developers from around the world based on the initial code donation by Sun Microsystems Inc. The ebxmlrr project is released under an Apache style open source license that permits royalty free use of the source and binaries." [Full context]

• [September 13, 2002] "CECID Donates MSH Codes to ebXML Development Community." - "Center for E-Commerce Infrastructure Development (CECID), Department of Computer Science and Information Systems (CSIS), The University of Hong Kong (HKU) is pleased to announce its code base donation of a Message Service Handler (MSH) implementation, coined Hermes, to the ebXML development community. This open-source project is hosted at www.freebxml.org and released under the Academic Free License that permits royalty free use of the source and binaries. Developers are encouraged to download Hermes for further development. Hermes is a Message Service Handler (MSH) implementation that is in compliance with the OASIS ebXML Message Service (ebMS V2) Standard. In addition, it is the first open source MSH to use RDBMS persistent storage to implement advanced ebMS features like reliable messaging. ebMS is a key component in the ebXML technical architecture. It utilizes SOAP, Internet transport protocols (e.g., HTTP and SMTP), and other security standards (e.g., XML Signature) to provide a standardized, reliable, and secure infrastructure for enterprises to exchange messages. Hermes supports secure messaging functions through widely-adopted Internet security technologies, such as XML Signature, SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and S/MIME (Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions). It has also implemented reliable delivery features defined in ebMS Standard to ensure the exchanged message is received and intact. The feature list of Hermes includes message packaging, reliable messaging, message ordering, error handling, security, synchronous reply, message status service, and RDBMS persistent storage. Hermes also supports transport protocols, such as HTTP and SMTP, to suit different needs of large and small enterprises, and different business requirements. Currently, it is being prepared for the Drummond Goup's Interoperability Conformance Test. Hermes has been implemented by developers at CECID under the auspices of Project Phoenix. Project Phoenix is primarily sponsored by the Innovation and Technology Commission of the Hong Kong Government. Hermes is donated to the ebXML development community and released under the Academic Free License..."

• [September 05, 2002] "ebXML Messaging Service Specification Approved As OASIS Standard." - "ebXML Messaging Service Specification version 2.0 has become the newest OASIS Standard, successfully completing a recent election by the consortium's membership at-large. The ebXML Messaging Service standard, which provides a secure method for exchanging electronic business transactions using the Internet, carries forward work initiated by OASIS and the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT)... To attain status as an OASIS Standard, ebXML Messaging Service v2 was first approved by its development team as an OASIS Committee Specification. After being implemented by a minimum of three organizations, it then underwent a 90-day open review, before the final balloting of OASIS members... ebXML Messaging is one of a suite of specifications that enables enterprises of any size and in any geographical location to conduct business over the Internet. ebXML Messaging Service v2 joins two other ebXML specifications that were recently approved as OASIS Standards, ebXML Registry Service (RS) v2 and ebXML Registry Information Model (RIM) v2. The ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement (CPPA) has completed the first-level of OASIS approval process as an OASIS Committee Specification. Development of ebXML specifications for Business Process and Core Component work continue with the UN/CEFACT process. ebXML Messaging Service v2 was developed by Commerce One, Cyclone Commerce, eXcelon, Fujitsu, GE Global Exchange, IBM, Intel, Mercator, SAP, SeeBeyond, Sonic Software, Sterling Commerce, Sun Microsystems, Sybase, webMethods, and other OASIS Contributor and Individual members..."

• [August 26, 2002] "The Distributive ebXML Grid." By David Lyon (GTD Technologies Pty Limited). Document posted to 'regrep@lists.oasis-open.org'. August 22, 2002. Slides from a Sydney meeting of August 20, 2002. "... why do we need an ebXML Grid? The Grid promises an easier way to do business transactions: The Web is often too slow for business; Web Servers are generally limited by the speed of users clicking from within their Browser; There is excess capacity on the Internet; Not enough business transactions go across the Internet; The Grid has a better business model... The Distributive ebXML Grid is a coop with a better business model than the current web: [1] The business model of the web is basically that software developers will build a website for a price. Transactions are low in cost but startup is quite expensive. In practice, few systems can interoperate and there is no financial incentive for interoperability to occur. [2] The business model of the Distributive ebXML Grid is transaction/subscription based with a percentage paid back to Integrators. The effective cost is lower for all concerned... The 'distributive ebXML Grid' is a 'circuit' or Grid of business computers networked using the Internet (the Grid works on permanently open TCP/IP connections; it can use transactions based on the international UBL standard from ebXML as well as EDI; it has a sustainable business model). Transactions get 'dropped' on the grid and find their way to trading partners systems. The Grid uses 256 bit security and X.509 Certs and pushes TCP/IP networking to it's limits..." From the ebXML-DEV posting: "the ebXML Grid concept, loosely based on existing ebXML work such as BPSS, UDDI, Core Components, Message Handling services and also a significant influence from X.500/LDAP...The idea behind the concept was to build a Distributive computer grid or circuit based on/for ebXML to take advantage of dialup, broadband and wireless connections for the ever increasing capabilities of the modern PC. The vision for the project is to one day interconnect tens of thousands of business computers on an ebXML grid. On demonstration will be some 256-bit, 2048-bit and 8192-bit encryption/decryption software for those who are security conscious..." In a note to the OASIS ebXML Registry list, David RR Webber compares the Grid to ArapXML Consortium work led by Todd Boyles.

• [August 21, 2002] "Fujitsu Interstage Demonstrates Business Process Interoperability for the Automotive Retail Industry. Open Applications Group, Inc. (OAGI) Project Shows Fujitsu Interstage Providing Business Process Integration across Vendors Utilizing ebXML, OAGIS and Standards for Technology in Automotive Retail (STAR) Specifications." - "Fujitsu Software Corporation today announced that Fujitsu has successfully shown Business Process interoperability utilizing B2B specifications that are being developed to meet the needs of the North American automotive industry. The demonstration executed a business process scenario developed by the STAR consortium based on the OAGI's Business Object Document (BOD) specification for interoperable Extensible Markup Language (XML) messages and the Electronic Business XML (ebXML) framework. The OAGI is the largest publisher of XML-based business messages in the world. The demonstration was conducted at the OAGI technical meeting in Detroit, August 13-15, 2002 attended by automobile companies, manufacturers from other industries, industry organizations and IT vendors. Fujitsu and Sybase, Inc exchanged messages, implementing STAR's Parts Order scenario using Open Application Group Interoperability Specification (OAGIS) BODs and ebXML specifications. This interoperability test proved that Fujitsu's Interstage CollaborationRing can communicate with other ebXML products, using STAR's BODs and business scenarios implemented using ebXML Business Process Specification Schema (BPSS), the ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement (CPPA), and ebXML Message Service (ebMS)... The OAGI specification has been adopted by the Auto Industry Action Group (AIAG), STAR and Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association (AAIA) consortiums for next generation business language and data messaging architecture. These organizations have formed collaborative initiatives with OAGI to design XML-based messages conforming to and extending the OAGI BOD library for eBusiness and Application Integration and the ebXML framework for B2B. The organizations' B2B infrastructure is Internet-based and utilizes elements of the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business' (UN/CEFACT) ebXML specification -- a B2B protocol being deployed worldwide. The results of these initiatives will enable auto industry companies to conduct business in real time by communicating data in common terms using standardized business processes. The interoperability demonstration was a project of the OAGI/NIST B2B Test Bed -- a joint initiative of the OAGI and NIST, which strives to advance the state of the art in B2B. The B2B Test Bed is available to users and vendors for testing and validating business level data exchanges among business partners utilizing open, standards based approaches..." See "Open Applications Group" and "Standards for Technology in Automotive Retail (STAR)."

• [July 25, 2002] "ebXML 2.1 Registry Services Implementation Announced." "The ebxmlrr project is pleased to announce the general availability of a developer download of version 1.0-alpha1 of the open-source OASIS/ebXML Registry. The registry implements the latest version (2.1) of the OASIS ebXML Registry specification. For your convenience, this release is available in both source and binary form under an Apache-style open source license that permits royalty-free use of the source and binaries..." See also the announcement from Farrukh Najmi. References are available from the OASIS ebXML Registry Reference Implementation Project (ebxmlrr) website and in the Reference Library

• [July 30, 2002] "Implementing the ebXML Registry/Repository. The Role of the ebXML RegRep (Registry/Repository) in an E-Business Framework." By Chaemee Kim. In XML Journal Volume 3, Issue 7 (July 2002). ['Chaemee Kim is a solution manager for KTNET, an electronic trade service provider.'] "The ebXML initiative has defined a RegRep (Registry/Repository) as providing a shared space for one or more B2B communities. With an ebXML RegRep, companies can submit, update, deprecate, or otherwise manage the parameters required to conduct electronic business. The RegRep also defines standardized APIs to access or otherwise share these parameters across trading communities. You may have heard about the benefits of a B2B business model, a concept that grew out of the electronic trading communities that were defined using EDI (via the X12 and EDIFACT standards). While B2B grew out of the traditional EDI space, many implementation requirements are missing or poorly understood. What are these missing elements? The traditional B2B business model (again, based on the EDI model) assumes that trading partners have advance knowledge of each other's e-business environments, trading protocols, and procedures. The "discovery" phase is traditionally done offline via a manual process (phone calls, legal contracts, etc.). This approach limits companies to conducting business with a relatively small community of well-known trading partners. A well-defined discovery process would enable most companies to significantly expand the size of their trading communities. The current B2B model, however, doesn't support such a process, forcing trading partner configuration to be accomplished offline. The ebXML RegRep is designed to close some of the gaps in traditional B2B business models, as B2B alone isn't enough to establish true collaborative commerce. B2B with an ebXML RegRep provides a more advanced B2B model that we call Business-RegRep-Business, or BRB. ebXML RegRep enables trade parameters to be shared among business peers, and helps to build more dynamic B2B environments based on the discovery and execution of trade agreements with ebXML-enabled trading partners... What distinguishes ebXML RegRep from UDDI in Web services? This is one of the questions most frequently asked by companies interested in both ebXML and Web services. ebXML RegRep and UDDI repository each have a different scope and purpose. An ebXML RegRep, which is more likely to be focused on content management, was designed to store and manage a wide range of electronic trading parameters. UDDI on the other hand was designed to manage the metadata associated with a Web service. In short, ebXML RegRep is the registry for B2B, while UDDI is the registry for Web services. From a UDDI perspective, the UDDI initiative can provide a loosely coupled connection model with an ebXML RegRep. An ebXML RegRep's registry service specification can be published as a SOAP interface, enabling a traditional Web service that describes how to access the ebXML RegRep using a SOAP client. From an ebXML RegRep perspective, the RegRep can include a Web services registry within an ebXML Registry Information Model (RIM). A Web services registry is realized in RIM version 2.0. The ebXML RegRep Technical Committee expanded its RIM to categorize Web services as RegRep-compatible metadata. The ebXML RegRep treats Web services as a set of metadata that B2B community members want to share with their trading partners. It is designed to support a wide variety of objects and metadata, while UDDI focuses exclusively on Web services..." [alt URL]

• [July 24, 2002] "UN/CEFACT and OASIS Finalize Appointments to Joint Coordination Committee for ebXML. Oracle and Sterling Commerce Join ebXML Management." - "ebXML sponsors, UN/CEFACT and OASIS, announced that Arijit Sengupta of Oracle and Bill Burcham of Sterling Commerce have joined the ebXML Joint Coordination Committee (JCC), the management body responsible for overall supervision of ebXML development, adoption and implementation. While ebXML specifications are advanced by specific OASIS technical committees and UN/CEFACT project teams, both standards organizations remain committed to jointly managing ebXML strategic vision, technical architecture, and education. Members of the ebXML JCC offer a balanced perspective, representing major Web services vendors, standards bodies, and government agencies. The committee is made up of five representatives from each of the sponsoring organizations. OASIS representatives include Arijit Sengupta of Oracle, Bill Burcham of Sterling Commerce, Simon Nicholson of Sun Microsystems, and Karl Best and Patrick Gannon of OASIS. Serving on behalf of UN/CEFACT are Klaus-Dieter Naujok of UN/CEFACT ebTWG and TWMG working groups, James Bryce Clark of McLure-Moynihan, Duane Nickull of XML Global, Ray Walker of the United Kingdom's Department of Trade and Industry, and Brian Hayes of Collaborative Domain. 'The ebXML framework -- available today and supported by a growing list of software vendors -- provides companies with a standard way to develop and deploy secure, reliable business-centric Web services,' said Simon Nicholson of Sun Microsystems, who currently serves as chair of the ebXML JCC. 'We're pleased to welcome Oracle and Sterling Commerce to the JCC and look forward to their input and continued support of ebXML development and adoption'... The ebXML JCC hosts joint meetings, where OASIS technical committees and UN/CEFACT project teams interface on related issues. The JCC also sponsors educational events, such as the recent 'Implementing ebXML' day at XML Europe 2002 in Barcelona... ebXML (www.ebXML.org), enables mission-critical Web services and transactional electronic commerce, allowing enterprises of any size and in any geographical location to conduct business over the Internet. Using ebXML, companies now have a set of standard methods to exchange business messages, conduct trading relationships, communicate data in common terms and define and register business processes. ebXML is sponsored by UN/CEFACT, the United Nations body whose mandate covers worldwide policy and technical development in the area of trade facilitation and electronic business, and OASIS, a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business standards..."

• [June 07, 2002]   HKU's E-Commerce Center Supports ebXML Pilot Projects with Government and Industry Partners.    An announcement from the University of Hong Kong Center for E-commerce Infrastructure Development (CECID) describes three ebXML pilot projects designed to "demonstrate the feasibility and added value of ebXML applications. CECID was recently awarded funding of USD $1.2 million from the Innovation and Technology Commission for an R&D project on the Establishment of an ebXML Software Infrastructure in Hong Kong. The new Project Phoenix aims to facilitate the adoption of e-commerce in Hong Kong to enhance the region's competitiveness; the R&D team has started intense development work on a local e-commerce software infrastructure and is carrying out pilot projects with industry and government partners in Hong Kong, based on the international ebXML standard. (1) MTR Corporation and Saggio Company are piloting the use of ebXML for the exchange of purchasing documents in automating transaction processing in office supplies procurement. (2) CECID is developing an ebMail prototype for pharmaceutical companies to apply to the Department of Health for import and export licenses of pharmaceutical products. (3) CECID is also developing an ebXML solution for the Marine Department to receive Dangerous Goods Manifests in XML form from shipping agents." [Full context]

• [May 16, 2002] "ebXML: A B2B Standard On Hold." By Eric Knorr. In ZDNet Tech Update (May 15, 2002). "Quick--how do most e-commerce dollars change hands? No, not through big B2B marketplaces such as Covisint. And not through B2C sites such as Amazon. The fat pipe for e-commerce dollars remains electronic data interchange (EDI), a standard born in the 1970s that enables businesses to order and bill electronically, typically for raw materials used in manufacturing. People don't think of EDI as e-commerce because most of its connections are still proprietary rather than Internet-based. But whatever you call it, EDI continues to transfer many times the dollars conveyed by Internet-based commerce, according to most estimates. Most of those EDI dollars flowed among a few hundred big corporations, mainly because EDI links are expensive to establish and maintain. For years, companies that relied on EDI lamented its limited reach and high cost. So in 1999, corporate EDI users, along with IBM, Sun, Ariba, Commerce One, and various other members of the OASIS standards group -- along with the United Nations -- decided to establish a rich common denominator that would make electronic trade relationships easier and cheaper using XML over the Internet. In May 2001, after 18 months of grueling work, ebXML was born. My question of the week is: Why is Microsoft opposing -- and why is IBM all but ignoring -- ebXML? Obviously, ebXML's corporate proponents have money to spend on technology. And they drew on decades of electronic trading experience to develop a common standard for companies to engage in machine-to-machine commerce. Moreover, according to Jon Bosak, a distinguished engineer at Sun (who led the original W3C working group that created the XML 1.0 specification), ebXML is gaining traction among governments all over the world, particularly in Asia. But mention ebXML to Microsoft, and you'll get your head bitten off--while the only IBM product that supports ebXML is the obscure Trading Partner Interchange software... David Burdette, director of Web services product management for Commerce One, acknowledges that ebXML focuses pretty much exclusively on B2B, a narrower scope than Web services. But he also disputes any implication that ebXML (particularly version 2.0 released last month) is not ready for prime time, asserting that it is 'completely fit for the purpose of B2B messaging in its current form.' Three points argue in favor of the adoption of ebXML: It exists, dozens of governments have launched initiatives that support it, and the EDI people behind it move more dollars over the wire in one year than Internet e-commerce industry has in its history. Sun is the only big technology company still pushing ebXML..."

• [May 02, 2002] "ebXML Adoption in Asia Speeds Up." - "Asian countries are gearing themselves up for the adoption of ebXML. In the 5th ebXML Asia Committee Meeting, held from 18th - 19th April [2002] in Chinese Taipei, the representatives from Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka (UNCTAD) and Thailand congregated to work on the measure for ebXML promotion and implementation in Asia. In the Meeting, the Committee, on the basis of review on the ebXML activities of each country and its work items, discussed measures to adopt ebXML and made several resolutions. Above all, participants agreed that ebXML implementation in real business was critical for the widespread adoption of ebXML. To promote ebXML implementation, the Committee decided to develop pan-Asia message design guideline by integrating the message design guideline prepared by KIEC with the ECOM's work on message assembly and core component definition. The Committee also decided to improve the ebXML registry linking model prepared by KIEC for the submission to OASIS ebXML Registry TC as a draft. During the Meeting, NII of Chinese Taipei and KIEC of Korea, which are operating ebXML registries, agreed to work on linking each other's ebXML registries to support eBusiness between Chinese Taipei and Korea. To promote participation of Asian experts and to facilitate the activities of ebXML Asia Committee members, the secretariat of ebXML Asia Committee will open an official ebXML Asia Committee website by the third quarter of 2002. The ebXML Asia Committee held five (5) meetings since its first meeting in December 2000. The Committee started with representatives from 3 Asian countries and economies: Chinese Taipei, Japan and Korea. However, in reflection of the increasing worldwide support for ebXML, the 5th meeting, hosted by TCA (Taipei Computer Association), marked wide participation of Asian countries. 30 eBusiness experts from 8 Asian countries and economies gathered together for this Meeting. Though ebXML is a comprehensive top-notch eBusiness solution, ebXML is not a cure-all. ebXML has many issues to resolve for implementation. Nonetheless, ebXML has great potential for Asian countries to leap forward. Especially, ebXML can provide a good opportunity for those Asian countries with no EDI infrastructure but planning to do eBusiness to jump in because they do not have to go through transition path. The ebXML Asia Committee plays the role of ebXML facilitator and promoter in the regional context. The Committee members will continue their joint activities on the selected ebXML issues, through close cooperation, until the next meeting. The next (6th) meeting will be hosted by ECOM (Electronic Commerce Promotion Council of Japan), which is scheduled on July 18 - 19 2002 at Tokyo, Japan..." [ebXML Asia Committee contact: Sangwon Lim of KIEC.]

• [April 26, 2002] "ebXMLsoft Announces ebXMLsoft RIM 2.0 -- A Full Implementation of the OASIS/ebXML Registry Information Model Specification v2.0." - ebXMLsoft, Inc. is pleased to announce ebXMLsoft RIM 2.0, a full implementation of the OASIS/ebXML Registry Information Model Specification v2.0. Completely implemented in Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), ebXMLsoft RIM 2.0 is an ebXML Registry software foundation suitable for building secure, robust, and reliable ebXML Registries. The OASIS/ebXML Registry/Repository v2.0 specification with other ebXML specifications, supports global business information exchange that enables companies of any size to communicate and conduct business globally. These emerging ebXML standards will reshape the way enterprises are doing business in the coming years and ebXMLsoft is committed to maximize its contribution in an overall ebXML implementation. Please visit ebXML.org specification page for more information about ebXML specifications. ebXMLsoft is also currently developing other components of the OASIS/ebXML Registry/Repository v2.0 specification and their availability will be announced in our future releases. About ebXMLsoft ebXMLsoft, Inc., headquarted in Toronto, Canada, is a leading ebXML company that offers ebXML software and consulting services. ebXMLsoft software combined with its services helps organizations to improve their business operations through ebXML, resulting in reduced cost and increased global presence." [From the Solutions page: "ebXMLsoft RIM 2.0 is a full implementation of the OASIS/ebXML Registry Information Model Specification v2.0. Both Unix/Linux and Windows platforms are supported. ebXMLsoft RIM 2.0 is an important infrastructure component of the ebXMLsoft Registry that is currently being developed. Written in Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), ebXMLsoft RIM 2.0 is designed to be secure, reliable, and scalable, thus making it a solid foundation for robust ebXML Registries that will support global business information exchange. ebXMLsoft RIM 2.0 works with any database management system that is supported by the J2EE Application Servers. ebXMLsoft RIM 2.0 also includes a Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) generator that conforms to the format of a URN that specifies the OSF Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) 128 bit UUID. This UUID format is required by the OASIS/ebXML Registry Information Model Specification v2.0..." [source]

• [April 10, 2002]   University of Hong Kong E-Commerce Center Opens Test Site for OASIS ebXML V2 Registry Implementation.    Researchers at the University of Hong Kong's Center for E-Commerce Infrastructure Development (CECID) and Department of Computer Science Information Systems have released a publicly-accessible (beta version) test site which implements the OASIS ebXML Version 2 Registry. The version 2 registry specifications (ebXML Registry Information Model [RIM]; ebXML Registry Services [RS]) were finalized by the OASIS TC in December 2001, and are now in final approval phase. The CECID development was done as part of the University's Project Phoenix, which uses the ebXML Registry as one of four ebXML architectural components; the registry "provides the services for the participating e-commerce community to register, access, and share document schemas, business process specifications, and company data. CECID will operate the registry on a trial basis under the auspices of its Project Phoenix, which is sponsored by the Innovation and Technology Commission of the Hong Kong Government, to establish an ebXML software infrastructure in Hong Kong." ebXML v2 Registry implementations were reported earlier by XML Global Technologies, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Sterling Commerce, and KTNET (Korea); IONA and ebXMLsoft have also announced ebXML Registry implementations nearing completion. [Full context]

• [March 01, 2002]   ebXML Message Service Specification Version 2.0 Submitted for Ratification as an OASIS Standard.    A posting from Ian Jones (Chair, OASIS ebXML Messaging Services TC) announced that the latest ebXML Message Service Specification Version 2.0 has been approved, and that the technical committee has voted to submit the specification for approval as an OASIS standard. The ebXML Message Service (ebMS) "defines the message enveloping and header document schema used to transfer ebXML messages over a communications protocol such as HTTP or SMTP and the behavior of software sending and receiving ebXML messages. The ebMS is defined as a set of layered extensions to the base 'Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)' and 'SOAP Messages with Attachments' specifications. It provides the message packaging, routing and transport facilities for the ebXML infrastructure. The specification document provides security and reliability features necessary to support international electronic business. These security and reliability features are not provided in the SOAP or SOAP with Attachments specifications. The ebMS is a closely coordinated definition for an ebXML message service handler (MSH)." Implementations of Version 2.0 of the specification have been reported by bTrade Inc., Cyclone Commerce, Sybase, IONA Technologies, Sterling Commerce, and Fujitsu. [Full context]

• [March 01, 2002] "Call For Papers: ebXML track at XML Europe 2002." May 23, 2002. "ebXML Day in Barcelona is jointly organized by OASIS and UN/CEFACT; we invite participation from members of both these organizations, as well as other industry groups that support ebXML, vendors and users of ebXML products." See the main entry for the XML Europe 2002 Conference and Exposition.

• [June 21, 2001] ebXML Technical Committees hosted by OASIS:

  • OASIS ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement Technical Committee and mailing list archive
  • OASIS ebXML Implementation, Interoperability, and Conformance Technical Committee and mailing list archive
  • OASIS ebXML Messaging Technical Committee and mailing list archive
  • OASIS ebXML Registry and Repository Technical Committee and mailing list archive

• [March 20, 2002]   Report to the Uniform Code Council (UCC) on ebXML Interoperability and Conformance Validation.    A "final status" report from the Drummond Group to the Uniform Code Council announces successful interoperability testing by four vendors participating in the ebXML Interoperability and Conformance Validation Test 4Q01. bTrade, inc., Cyclone Commerce, Sterling Commerce, and Sybase have "completed all requirements and passed tests between each product demonstrating interoperability and conformance to the ebXML-MS v2.0 document; the participating vendors' products are in full compliance with the ebXML-MS v2.0 specification. The vendors underwent thorough and rigorous testing to demonstrate their ebXML software products comply to a common level of interoperability." There was one functional requirement where the testing participants agreed to extend the ebXML specification (Encryption/Confidentiality); this new functionality was developed as a joint effort of the Testing group and presented to the ebXML-MS team. The UCC-Drummond ebXML messaging pilot and subsequent tests will ensure that different e-business software offerings can seamlessly work in concert under real world conditions, eliminating costly communication obstacles and facilitating more efficient trading partner relationships. The ebXML messaging specification has grown in cross industry endorsements over past months with industry groups such as the Standards for Technology in Automotive Retail (STAR), Open Applications Group Inc., Covisint, the Global Commerce Initiative (GCI), and the Open Travel Alliance stating their support." [Full context]

• [December 12, 2001]   OASIS ebXML Registry Technical Committee Releases Approved Version 2.0 RIM/RS Specifications.    Approved Version 2.0 TC specifications for the OASIS ebXML Registry Information Model (RIM) and Registry Services Specification (RS) have been published by the OASIS ebXML Registry Technical Committee, together with XML Schemas and UML model diagrams. Implementations of the ebXML Registry's RIM and RS specifications have been reported by several companies. The Registry Information Model document "provides a blueprint or high-level schema for the ebXML Registry. The Registry itself provides a stable store where information submitted by a Submitting Organization is made persistent. Such information is used to facilitate ebXML-based Business to Business (B2B) partnerships and transactions. Submitted content may be XML schema and documents, process descriptions, ebXML Core Components, context descriptions, UML models, information about parties and even software components. The Registry Services Specification defines the interface to the ebXML Registry Services as well as interaction protocols, message definitions and XML schema." [Full context]

• [January 30, 2002] "OASIS ebXML Registry Technical Committee Approves Updated Specs. Consortium Membership to Vote on OASIS Standards." - " The OASIS ebXML Registry Technical Committee announced its approval of the ebXML Registry Services Specification v2.0 and the ebXML Registry Information Model v2.0. Both are updated versions of specifications originally developed under the ebXML Initiative, jointly sponsored by OASIS and the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT). The new versions of the specifications have advanced under the OASIS technical process and have been submitted to the OASIS membership at-large for consideration as OASIS Standards. The OASIS membership will vote on the ebXML Registry specifications in April 2002. The use of registries facilitates business-to-business and intra-enterprise transactions by enabling a manageable method of discovering and connecting with partners, and exchanging business data. ebXML Registry specifications provide a set of services that allow information to be shared between interested parties, enabling prospective trading partners to find one another and conduct business. The shared information, which may include company profiles as well as industry-specific messages, vocabularies and other data, is maintained as objects in a repository and managed by the ebXML Registry Services, defined in the new versions of the specifications... In addition to defining the interface to the ebXML Registry Services, the ebXML Registry Services Specification also identifies message definitions and XML schema. A separate document, the ebXML Registry Information Model, provides information on the types of metadata that are stored in the registry as well as the relationships among the various metadata classes... The two revised specifications have been approved by the members of the OASIS ebXML Registry Technical Committee, which include Boeing, Fujitsu, IONA, Logistics Management Institute, NIST, Sterling Commerce, Sun Microsystems, Vitria Technology, webMethods, and others. The specifications are now under review by the entire membership of OASIS; voting on OASIS Standards will be held in April 2002."

• Collaboration-Protocol Profile and Agreement Specification Version 2.0. September 23, 2002. [source]

• CPPA v2.0 XML Schema. [source]

• [March 08, 2002]   Sun Microsystems Announces JAXR API Proposed Final Draft.    A posting of Farrukh Najmi to the OASIS ebXML Registry TC announces the "publication of the Proposed Final Draft of a specification for Java API for XML Registries (JAXR). The JAXR specification provides a simple Java API for accessing OASIS ebXML and other registries, and will help to promote the use of OASIS ebXML registries within the Java developer community. This version of the specification provides a near final and stable version of the JAXR API with comprehensive support for the version 2 of the OASIS ebXML Registry specifications." JAXR supports "a uniform and standard Java API for accessing different kinds of XML Registries. An 'XML registry' [in this context] is an enabling infrastructure for building, deploying, and discovering web services. Currently there are a variety of specifications for XML registries including, pre-eminently, the ebXML Registry and Repository standard, which is being developed by OASIS and U.N./CEFACT and the UDDI specification, which is being developed by a vendor consortium. JAXR enables Java software programmers to use a single, easy-to-use abstraction API to access a variety of XML registries." [Full context]

• [January 22, 2002] "The ebXML Registry." By Kristian Cibulskis. In XML-Journal Volume 3, Issue 01 (January 2002). "The Electronic Business Extensible Markup Language, better known as ebXML, aims to allow companies of any size to conduct business electronically via the Internet. Obviously, companies doing business together isn't a new idea. EDI (electronic data interchange) has been used between large businesses to conduct electronic business since the 1960s. However, EDI often requires the implementation of custom protocols and proprietary message formats between the individual companies. Because of this, its use has been restricted to larger corporations that can absorb the initial costs required to do business in this fashion. The goal of ebXML is to provide a flexible, open infrastructure that will let companies of any size, anywhere in the world, do business together. The ebXML effort is jointly sponsored by the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) and OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, along with approximately 30 other industry leaders. UN/CEFACT is also the standards body behind EDIFACT, an EDI standard used heavily throughout Europe and the Pacific Rim. The ebXML group has delivered three key components of a next-generation B2B infrastructure: (1) An XML messaging specification; (2) A trading partners agreement specification; (3) A registry/repository specification. A second initiative at OASIS has begun to create a Universal Business Language (UBL), essentially a standard set of XML business documents to be used for B2B transactions. UBL is based on xCBL 3.0, which is freely available and widely deployed. In this article we'll explore the ebXML Registry/Repository, one of the cornerstone components of the ebXML architecture..." See (1) "OASIS ebXML Registry Technical Committee Releases Approved Version 2.0 RIM/RS Specifications"; and (2) "Announcing JAXR RI 1.0 EA." [alt URL]

• [November 09, 2001]   eBTWG Core Components Specification Project Team Releases New Draft Specification.    Members of the eBTWG Core Component Project Team have published a new public-review draft of its Core Components Technical Specification, Part 1, which "contains information to guide in the interpretation or implementation of ebXML concepts." The eBTWG Core Components Specification Project Team operates under the UN/CEFACT Electronic Business Transition Working Group, and has been formed to produce: (1) a consolidated ebXML Core Components Technical Specification that incorporates the material in the ebXML Discovery and Analysis, Naming Convention, and Context technical reports adds material related to Metadata Definition; (2) a specification for and the beginning lexicon of core components. The CC system is designed to ensure that two trading partners using different (XML/EDI) syntaxes are using business semantics in the same way. "The UN/CEFACT Core Component solution presented in the specification presents a methodology for developing a common set of semantic building blocks that represent the general types of business data in use today; it forms the basis for standards development work of business analysts, business users and information technology specialists supplying the content of and implementing applications that will employ the UN/CEFACT Core Component Library (CCL)." [Full context]

• [January 03, 2002]   Covisint Supports ebXML Message Specification and OAGIS Standards.    Covisint has announced the "adoption and implementation of the ebXML message transport layer and use of the Open Applications Group's OAGIS standards for the XML document payload as its technology strategy. Covisint's adoption of these standards allows OEMs, automotive suppliers and software providers to make critical business decisions on applications and products that also use these common standards. This will promote software and application interoperability that enhances business agility, improves communication and reduces integration costs. A 'message transport layer' is a set of electronic protocols that works very much like a paper envelope works to 'envelop' a message or letter. It contains information as to who sent it and directs where to deliver the document. The XML payload, in an electronic sense, is the letter inside the envelope. This approach will give Covisint the ability to exchange Internet-based messages between trading partners wrapped in a standard message framework that is being adopted globally... At the outset, Covisint will use 'off-the-shelf' XML standards for the document payload but recognizes the need to develop industry wide XML standards that are focused on the needs of the automotive industry. In addition, Covisint will work in conjunction with other associations to manage a transition plan from existing legacy specifications to the adoption of ebXML and OAGIS XML standards." [Full context]

• [December 28, 2001] "Covisint Crafts XML Schema." By Renee Boucher Ferguson. In eWEEK (December 24, 2001). ['The auto industry e-marketplace will adopt OASIS' ebXML framework standard and align with the OAG to create an XML schema for the auto industry.'] "Covisint LLC, the auto industry e-marketplace backed by such heavyweights as DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp., is making decisive standards moves to improve efficiencies for its members. The Southfield, Mich., company will announce during the first week of January that it has aligned with the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards and will adopt that group's ebXML (Electronic Business XML) messaging standard. In addition, Covisint plans to announce in the first quarter that it has aligned with the Open Applications Group Inc. standards body to create an XML schema for the auto industry. Sponsored by two standards bodies, OASIS and the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business, ebXML is a modular suite of specifications that provides a messaging and enveloping standard for companies to exchange electronic business messages, communicate data in common terms, and define and register business processes. Covisint currently receives XML purchase orders from DaimlerChrysler, Ford and GM, but they are received in three different flavors. Covisint also receives electronic data interchange documents from other members that are also enveloped in a variety of flavors. What Covisint is attempting to do with ebXML is define a standard envelope as well as a standard payload, according to Jeffrey Cripps, the company's director of industry relations. An XML schema is a data structure for documents that not only defines the syntax of a document -- what a field is called -- but also defines semantics, or what a specific field means. Cripps said the exchange seeks to create for the auto industry a schema for a global dictionary that can be used for interoperability among vertical markets--a huge gap in business-to-business. While aligning with ebXML is a significant move for the exchange, Covisint's work with the OAG could prove even more worthwhile by enabling it to develop proprietary standards for the automotive industry under the umbrella of an open-standards group, officials said. Cripps is in talks with the action groups of the North American and European automotive industries -- Automotive Industry Action Group and Odette, respectively -- to see if they will join Covisint and the OAG in developing the schema for the industry..."

• [November 05, 2001] "Core Components : Delivering on the ebXML Promise." By Alan Kotok (Data Interchange Standards Association - DISA). Published by MightyWords, Inc. October 02, 2001. 71 pages. ISBN 0-7173-1939-3. [Excerpt from a briefing which] "discusses Electronic Business XML or ebXML, a new global standard for conducting e-business, and focuses on the part of ebXML that deals with business semantics, called core components. It provides an overview of this innovative technology, to help business people begin planning for its adoption and benefits. Once implemented in business software and services, ebXML will make it possible for any company of any size in any industry to do e-business with any other company in any other industry, anywhere in the world. To achieve this ambitious goal, ebXML sets out to do what no other business standard has tried to do, namely develop a way for companies to talk business systematically and accurately across industry or linguistic boundaries. Core components are the basic data items that business documents can use and reuse from one document to the next. Many common business documents have the same basic structure and underlying data content. However, different industries use different terms for the same ideas, and for businesses to communicate with each other, they need a way of breaking through these semantic barriers, without asking companies to change their long-standing business practices. This briefing describes how core components fit into the overall ebXML architecture, discusses their derivation and use in business documents, and provides a real-life example showing the potential for generating new business opportunities... The work on core components includes not only the identification of these interchangeable parts in business documents, but the systematic and consistent definition of the business context - the substance of industry business practices and terminology - that give the components their precise meaning in business documents. The systematic combination of core components with context allows for the automatic assembly of e-business documents exchanged with trading partners... EbXML is still a work in progess. The development phase ended in May 2001,ethe core components team having completed its basic methodology and proposed a starter set of core components.. Since then, the two leading e-business standards organizations have joined to continue the work. Industry organizations and individual companies should consider taking part in this important exercise, since it will likely determine the language of e-business for many years to come." An online document in PDF format supplies a longer extract from the briefing. [cache]

• [November 05, 2001] "Professional ebXML Foundations." Overview of the book by Pim Van Der Eijk, Duane Nickull, J. J. Dubray, Colleen Evans, David Chappell, Betty Harvey, Marcel Noordzij, Jan Vegt, Tim McGrath, Vivek Chopra, and Bruce Peat. [To be] published by Wrox Press, November 2001. ISBN: 1861005903. 600 pages. "ebXML is a framework of specifications that enables businesses to collaborate electronically using XML-based technologies. The framework comprises modular components, addressing each of the key functions required to implement a complete e-business solution. These functions include: defining business processes and associated roles and activities, creating and publishing business profiles in a registry, storing business information in a repository, searching for other business partners, agreeing trading protocols, creating business documents, and sending them via secure and reliable messaging systems. ebXML is open, interoperable, and affordable. Maintained by industry consortia (OASIS and UN/CEFACT) and based on XML, it allows companies to benefit from electronic trading via a global network regardless of size or geographical location, both within and across industries. The book features: (1) An overview of electronic business and the interrelation of the ebXML framework components; (2) Modeling business processes and documents with ebXML BPSS, UMM, and XML Schemas; (3) Defining trading profiles and setting up collaborative agreements with ebXML CPP/CPA; (4) Attracting and discovering business partners using ebXML Registry/Repository or UDDI; (5) Creating business message payloads using ebXML Core Components, XML, and non-XML content; (6) Transporting messages using ebXML Messaging Services, SOAP, JMS, and JAXM; (7) Implementing secure, flexible ebXML solutions; (8) Real world case studies. See the online Table of Contents and the description from Amazon.

• [November 05, 2001] "ebXML and SMEs. How ebXML measures up for small to medium enterprises." By Michael C. Rawlins (Rawlins EC Consulting). November 2, 2001. [The latest article in a series on "ebXML - A Critical Analysis". This series presents an analysis of the products of ebXML, its success in achieving its stated objectives, and an assessment of the long-term impact of the initiative.] "From several studies as well as professional experience from those involved in EDI implementations for SMEs, there are several reasons that SMEs find e-business, particularly in the form of EDI, difficult. The cited reasons range from too expensive and too costly, to standards being too hard to use, to poor application integration. Despite the wide variety of reasons, the sources of the problems basically break down into two major areas: application support and application integration. Application support for e-business is a fairly wide area because it is strongly affected by the particular business processes that larger partners want to implement electronically. One example is a suppliers business application being able to create the data for a shipment notice electronically to a customer before the goods are shipped, and print a bar code label for the package. Another is the ability to maintain a cross-reference of customer item numbers to internal item numbers. The technical infrastructure side of ebXML deals with lower level middleware and does not address this type of application support. So, no help is provided to SMEs at this level. Another aspect of ebXML and SME problems is the definition of the business processes in which the SMEs participate. ebXML did not define the business processes, but only aspects of the methodology for defining them. I will discuss this in a later article, but it suffices for the purposes of this article that ebXML did nothing immediate for SMEs in this area either. So, ebXML provided no help to SMEs in application support for e-business. The other area is in application integration, i.e., interfacing or integrating the e-business middleware with the business application. Perhaps the best way to determine what ebXML did in this area is to examine the functions and architecture of current EDI and future ebXML based systems, and see if there is any improvement... The short answer is that it made it easier and more efficient for large enterprises to conduct business electronically. For example, an SME dealing with six large customers gains no appreciable benefits by being able to electronically configure its system for trading with them. However, a large enterprise with hundreds or even thousands of suppliers sees significant benefits. There are also a few very nice pieces of work in specific areas in ebXML. However, as good as they may be, the market may not be very interested in them in the long run. My next article will review the likely market impact of the ebXML infrastructure specifications."

• [October 23, 2001] "ebXML CPP/A APIs for Java." Java Specification Request #157. Specification Lead Dale Moberg (Cyclone Commerce Inc.). Contact Person: Himagiri (Hima) Mukkamala (Sybase Inc.) Summary: "This JSR is to provide a standard set of APIs for representing and manipulating Collaboration Profile and Agreement information described by ebXML CPP/A (Collaboration Protocol Profile/Agreement)documents." Detail: "This JSR is to provide a standard set of APIs for representing and manipulating Collaboration Profile and Agreement information described by ebXML CPPA (Collaboration Protocol Profile/Agreement)documents. These APIs will define a way to construct and manipulate various profile information corresponding to the CPP/A. In addition, these APIs will provide a way to negotiate CPAs between two partners enabling them to conduct e-business. The profile information can be derived from a CPP document or constructed through the API provided or constructed by accessing a ebXML Registriy/Repository using JAXR. The APIs would also assist users in creating a CPA document from merging to CPP documents by doing a selective merge of the profile information or by providing infrastructure to negotiate between the partners. The APIs would also enable users to create a base profile by taking information from a Business Process Specification document... By design, this proposed specification depends on the ebXML CPP/A specification. ebXML CPP/A is an XML format for describing profile and agreement information for partners agreeing to collaborate based on ebXML as the underlying architecture. In addition, since the ebXML CPP/A specification is bound to the ebXML MSH specification and ebXML BPSS specification, this specification is dependent on these." Need: "This set of APIs will allow developers to build ebXML based e-business applications without directly having to access the CPP/A documents. These will also let users of the APIs create CPA documents for taking part in collaborations." Existing documents, specifications, or implementations that describe the technology: (1) ebXML CPP/A; (2) ebXML MSG.

• [September 22, 2001] UN/CEFACT XML Business Document Library Project (XBDL). A public posting from Klaus-Dieter Naujok (UN/CEFACT/eBTWG & TMWG Chair) on 2001-09-21 announced the approval of an XML Business Document Library Project (XBDL) by executives of the UN/CEFACT Electronic Business Transition Working Group. The initiative is a response to "the business user community in providing a migration path for established legacy EDI semantics and associated business process artifact dictionaries containing codes, elements and message semantics to a Standard Library of XML business grammatical components." The XBDL Project as designed was "in concept identical to the recently approved work of the OASIS UBL Technical Committee; however, the work is not related to ebXML infrastructure work, but related to ebXML content and context work which is the agreed responsibility of UN/CEFACT." The project team was scheduled to have its first meeting as part of the eBTWG meeting, 8-12 October 2001 in San Francisco, CA, USA. See: "UN/CEFACT XML Business Document Library Project (XBDL)"

• [September 20, 2001]   CommerceNet and UN/CEFACT eBusiness Transition Working Group (eBTWG) Holds Inaugural Meeting.    An announcement from CommerceNet and the UN/CEFACT eBusiness Transition Working Group (eBTWG) describes the first meeting of the working group in San Francisco on October 8-12, 2001. During its initial five-day meeting, "eBTWG will continue UN/CEFACT and OASIS' efforts to further the development of XML standards for electronic business. The working group's first order of business is to pinpoint the specific work necessary to advance ebXML development as related to Business Processes, Core Components and eBusiness Architecture. For the opening meeting, eBTWG has identified three working project teams. In the coming weeks, more project teams will be added to the October agenda. The first three project teams will focus on core areas of ebXML development. The project teams include: (1) The Core Components Specifications Project Team, which is charged with producing a consolidated ebXML Core Components Technical Specification that incorporates the material in the ebXML Discovery and Analysis, Naming Convention and Context technical reports. (2) The Business Collaboration Patterns and Monitored Commitments Specification, which will be responsible for defining and showing through example, what businesses can reasonably expect and what the underlying technology must support within a fully compliant ebXML business relationship. (3) The eBusiness Architecture Specification, which will ensure that electronic business initiatives are technically and practically implementable and that the eBusiness architecture meets the requirements of businesses on a global scale." The eBTWG Executives have also announced the approval of an XML Business Document Library (XBDL) Project which "is to provide a migration path for established legacy EDI semantics and associated business process artifact dictionaries containing codes, elements and message semantics to a Standard Library of XML business grammatical components." [Full context]

• [September 12, 2001]   OASIS Technical Committee Proposed for Universal Business Language (UBL).    A call for participation has been issued in connection with a proposed OASIS Technical Committee for a Universal Business Language (UBL). The new Universal Business Language is proposed as "a synthesis of existing XML business document libraries. Work would begin with xCBL 3.0 as the starting point and to develop the standard UBL library by mutually agreed-upon changes to xCBL 3.0 based on industry experience with other XML business libraries and with similar technologies such as Electronic Data Interchange. The TC will endeavor to develop UBL in light of standards/specifications issued by UN/CEFACT, ISO, IEC, ITU, W3C, IETF, OASIS, and such other standards bodies and organizations as the UBL TC may deem relevant. It would harmonize UBL as far as practical with the ebXML specifications approved in Vienna (May 2001), with the work of the Joint Core Components initiative (a joint project of ANSI ASC X12 and the UN/EDIFACT Working Group), and with the work of other appropriate business information bodies. The primary deliverable of the UBL TC is a coordinated set of XML grammatical components that will allow trading partners to unambiguously identify the business documents to be exchanged in a particular business context." The new OASIS TC is to be chaired by Jon Bosak (Sun Microsystems), and is projected to be completed within 1-2 years. [Full context]

• [October 01, 2001] "OAGIS Implementation Using the ebXML CPP, CPA and BPSS Specifications v1.0." OAGI White Paper. By Jean-Jacques Dubray (Eigner US, Inc.). 9/27/2001. Version 1.03. 64 pages. The OAGI (Open Applications Group, Inc.) has developed the largest set of business messages and integration scenarios for enterprise application integration and business-to-business (B2B) integration. However, OAGI does not specify an implementation architecture (also called an implementation framework). Three major B2B implementation architectures have been developed to this day: RosettaNet, BizTalk, and ebXML. They provide the basis for interoperability between different vendor and home-grown solutions alike. The OAGI policy is to be technology sensitive but not specific, and to use existing open standards when possible. This white paper provides a detailed recommendation for how to transport OAGI BODs (Business Object Documents) using ebXML v1.0 dated 5/14/2001. The reader is expected to have a thorough understanding of the OAGI BOD structure and the ebXML v1.0 specifications. The reader is encouraged to read the OAGI BOD Architecture documents and the ebXML specifications. These documents can be freely obtained from the OAGI and ebXML Web sites... This document provides a general recommendation for the usage and configuration of the ebXML implementation architecture in carrying out electronic transactions with OAGI BODs. In particular, it specifies how to define Collaboration Definitions for scenario diagrams. It also specifies how to declare CPPs and corresponding CPAs based on these Collaborations. The CPPs can be published to an ebXML Registry just like any other CPP. The Messaging Service can be used as is since it is content agnostic. This document also describes the relationship between the infrastructure level messages (Signal Messages) used by ebXML and OAGI (Confirm BOD) to identify message receipt or exceptions. This white paper does not deal with the aspects of ebXML that are not yet part of the specification (such as Core Components). In addition, this paper recommends the use of Business Collaborations outside the context of ebXML. A Collaboration Definition can be used outside the scope of an ebXML solution and consequently could be used to formalized all OAGI scenario diagrams even the one that do not involve B2B communication. This approach may be desirable in order to provide a commercial OAGI solution with out-of-the-box capabilities while retaining the ability to customize the use of scenario diagrams for internal applications. The OAGI Integration Specification (OAGIS) includes a broad set of BODs and integration scenarios that can be used in different business environments, such as A2A and B2B. BODs are message definitions that can be used broadly across many different industries (for example, telecommunications and automotive) and aspects of Supply Chain Automation (for example, Ordering, Catalog Exchange, Quotes, etc.). OAGI also defines the OAMAS (Open Application Middleware API Specification), which is an application programming interface (API) for application integration that provides an abstraction from specific vendor solutions..." See the overview/download page for other eBusiness Framework White Papers. See "Open Applications Group." [source]

• [October 18, 2001] "HL7 ebXML Demonstration Overview. Introduction for HL7." By Todd Freter (XML Technology Center, Industry Initiatives, Sun Microsystems, Inc.) October 2, 2001. 17 pages. "Health Level 7 (HL7) is a non-profit consortium dedicated to the development and publication of protocol specifications for application level communications among diverse health data acquisition, processing, and handling systems. This annotated presentation by Todd Freter of the Sun XML Technology Center provides an overview of HL7's ebXML proof-of-concept demonstration. ebXML: [The author describes who launched the ebXML initiative, who is supporting it, and where to go for basic information; presents the five layers of the ebXML e-business framework, starting at the highest level and descending down to the wire-level. It also mentions the technical architecture description and quality review process, which keep the effort honest...; makes the point the ebXML enjoys support and participation from around the globe, and that the effort has garnered several important endorsements.... showsprovides the phases in which ebXML is delivering its work products. In May 2001, ebXML voted to accept all of its specifications either as full specifications or as technical reports to be developed into full specifications. Since then the ongoing work has been divided between the UN and OASIS... It's important to note that the technical effort is also motivated by a desire to enable second- and third-world economies to participate in the internet economy without having to incur the high cost of EDI. To that end, the notion of royalty-free licensing of ebXML specifications is a key consideration..." [cache]

• [September 05, 2001] "The ebXML technology is based on a set of building blocks designed to meet common business requirements and conditions. The ebXML technical architecture makes use of existing standards wherever possible, building on the experience of EDI while taking advantage of the increased flexibility of XML and ubiquity of the Internet. Because the architecture is modular, industries or companies can choose to implement parts of the ebXML technology rather than trying to do everything all at once. (1) Messaging: The ebXML messages use a specification called the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). SOAP is an XML application that defines a message format with headers to indicate sender, receiver, routing, and security details. A recent enhancement to SOAP allows for the attachment of any digitized content, which enables ebXML messages to send engineering drawings or patient X-rays, as well as business data. (2) Business Processes: A basic feature of the ebXML architecture, and one that separates it from other XML frameworks, is its emphasis on business processes. The use of modeling languages and charting tools such as the Unified Modeling Language (UML) offer ways of systematically capturing the flow of business data among trading partners and representing this business knowledge in a standard format. (3) Trading Partner Profiles and Agreements: Another important feature of ebXML is the systematic representation of company capabilities to conduct e-business in what ebXML calls the collaboration protocol profile (CPP). With CPPs, companies can use a common XML format to list the industries, business processes, messages, and data-exchange technologies that they support. (4) Registries and Repositories: The part of ebXML with which most companies will have contact early on are the registries, which contain the industry processes, messages, and vocabularies used to define the transactions exchanged with trading partners. (5) Core Components: As well as business processes, ebXML relies on core components to provide interoperability among industries and business functions, but core components work at the individual data-element level. Core components identify the data items that businesses use most often and across industries, assigning them neutral names and unique identifiers... At this stage [June 2001], ebXML is a set of documents, with several prototypes completed, but with many companies now building systems to support it... The ebXML specifications developed as a result of a total worldwide volunteer effort, and a completely open and transparent process, where anyone with a computer, Internet connection, and email address could take part. ebXML is a testament to the open standards process and the quality of its results." [See the book excerpt from ebXML: The New Global Standard for Doing Business on the Internet, by Alan Kotok and David R.R. Webber.]

• [September 03, 2001] "Business Process Specification Schema." Version 1.01. By OASIS ebXML Business Process Team. Non-normative version formatted for printing, July 2001. [11 May 2001.] Latest version URL: http://www.ebxml.org/specs/ebBPSS.pdf. Formal notations in appendices A-C: Appendix A: Sample XML Business Process Specification; Appendix B: Business Process Specification Schema DTD; Appendix C: Business Process Specification Schema XML Schema. "The ebXML Specification Schema provides a standard framework by which business systems may be configured to support execution of business collaborations consisting of business transactions. It is based upon prior UN/CEFACT work, specifically the metamodel behind the UN/CEFACT Modeling Methodology (UMM) defined in the N090R9.1 specification. The Specification Schema supports the specification of Business Transactions and the choreography of Business Transactions into Business Collaborations. Each Business Transaction can be implemented using one of many available standard patterns. These patterns determine the actual exchange of Business Documents and business signals between the partners to achieve the required electronic commerce transaction... This document describes the Specification Schema, both in its UML form and in its DTD form. The document first introduces general concepts and semantics, then applies these semantics in a detail discussion of each part of the model. The document then specifies all elements in the UML form, and then in the XML form... Business process models describe interoperable business processes that allow business partners to collaborate. Business process models for e-business must be turned into software components that collaborate on behalf of the business partners. The goal of the ebXML Specification Schema is to provide the bridge between e-business process modeling and specification of e-business software components. The ebXML Specification Schema provides for the nominal set of specification elements necessary to specify a collaboration between business partners, and to provide configuration parameters for the partners' runtime systems in order to execute that collaboration between a set of e-business software components. A specification created against the ebXML Business Process Specification Schema is referred to as an ebXML Business Process Specification. The ebXML Business Process Specification Schema is available in two stand-alone representations, a UML version, and an XML version. The UML version of the ebXML Business Process Specification Schema is merely a UML Class Diagram. It is not intended for the direct creation of ebXML Business Process Specifications. Rather, it is a self-contained statement of all the specification elements and relationships required to be able to create an ebXML compliant Business Process Specification. Any methodologies and/or metamodels used for the creation of ebXML compliant Business Process Specifications must at minimum support these elements and relationships. The XML version of the ebXML Business Process Specification Schema provides the specification for XML based instances of ebXML Business Process Specifications, and as a target for production rules from other representations. Both a DTD and a W3C Schema are provided. The UML and XML based versions of the ebXML Business Process Specification Schema are unambiguously mapped to each other..."

• [August 24, 2001] "ebXML and Interoperability. And other issues from the Terms of Reference." By Mike Rawlins. Part 3 (August 23, 2001) from the series "ebXML - A Critical Analysis" ['The 18-month ebXML joint initiative between UN/CEFACT and OASIS was declared officially completed this past May 11. Now that it is over, it is time to take a look at what it accomplished. This series presents an analysis of the products of ebXML, its success in achieving its stated objectives, and an assessment of the long-term impact of the initiative.'] "The Terms of Reference between UN/CEFACT and OASIS that laid the foundation for ebXML discuss several objectives and issues to be addressed by the initiative. In this article I'll examine how well those were achieved. The primary goal specified in the Terms of Reference for ebXML was to enable interoperability. To assess how well this goal was met I'll use the definition of interoperability from the ebXML Requirements Specification (section 2.5.1). I'll use a fairly simple approach of assigning a letter grade of A through F (with a 4-point scale) to each of the criteria. Then to keep things simple, I'll average the grades for an overall score, weighting each criterion equally. We'll start off with a perfect 'A' for achieving interoperability as the default, then lower by one or more letter grades for deficiencies such as the following: (1) Offering options, with a means to indicate the option chosen, instead of a single solution; (2) Offering several options without reasonable guidance on how to choose among them; (3) Specification not being complete. Where ebXML didn't address a criterion, I assign a failing "F". Here are the criteria and my grading. Where notes were included in the Requirements Specification, I have included them here. The basis of the grading is the ebXML work as of the end of the initiative in May, 2001. Further work may (I hope!) improve the grading, particularly in cases where the work is incomplete... in regard to the deliverables called for in the Terms of Reference, ebXML did develop a set of technical specifications, but we didn't do a very good job at enabling interoperability. ebXML did not address its other two deliverables. In summary, I would have to say that we failed to meet the mandates of the Terms of Reference. This is a rather severe criticism, and I feel obliged to point out that this is by necessity a fairly subjective analysis; others may have different opinions. I again note that much of the work was incomplete or not addressed when the initiative ended, and the assessment may improve considerably as CEFACT continues the business process and core component work. I will, however, show in my next article that assessing ebXML's performance in regard to its other major goal is much more objective and clear cut. By nearly any way you look at it, ebXML was a dismal failure in bringing the benefits of e-commerce to Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and developing countries..."

• [August 16, 2001] "Overview of the ebXML Architectures." By Mike Rawlins. July 19, 2001. Part of ebXML - A Critical Analysis, "a series which presents an analysis of the products of ebXML, its success in achieving its stated objectives, and an assessment of the long-term impact of the initiative..." From the introduction: "ebXML started its work program with the overall solution and its high level architecture already decided. The task of the Architecture project team was therefore not to develop the architecture from a set of requirements, but to describe the chosen architecture (based on what the other project teams were doing) and flesh out its details. They had quite a difficult time doing this, evidenced by the fact that the Technical Architecture Specification was approved in February 2001, very near to the May 2001 completion of the ebXML work program. One of the main difficulties in describing the ebXML architecture is that, in conventional software architecture terms, there is not one ebXML architecture but instead there are two. One of these is the architecture for the software comprising the technical infrastructure, often referred to as a product architecture. The other is the architecture for performing systems analysis and development, often referred to as a process architecture. The Architecture Specification somewhat alludes to this in its "Recommended Modeling Methodology" section when discussing the Business Operational View and Functional Service View (two concepts taken from the ISO Open-EDI Reference Model). However, it does not explicitly identify two separate architectures. The latest academic thinking about software architectures holds that six attributes are required to fully describe an architecture. These are: (1) Elements (components/parts) from which systems are built; (2) Interactions (connections/connectors/glues/relationships) between the elements; (3) Patterns - The layout of the elements and their interactions, guiding their composition. For example, the number of elements, the number of connectors, order, topology, directionality; (4) Constraints - On the patterns. For example, temporal, cardinality, concurrency, etc.; (5) Styles - Abstraction of architectural components from various specific architectures (Sometimes used interchangeably with patterns). For example: Layered (as in Unix OS, OSI stack), pipe & filter, object oriented; (7) Rationale - Describe why the particular architecture was chosen... The ebXML Architecture Specification does a fairly good job in defining the elements and interactions of the ebXML Architecture..."

• [August 15, 2001] "OASIS ebXML Registry Proposal: ebXML Registry as a Web Service." Prepared by the OASIS ebXML Registry RAWS Sub-team. Posted 2001-08-15 by Farrukh Najmi to the OASIS Reg-Rep [RAWS] list. An initial RAWS draft proposal for consideration and review by the OASIS ebXML Registry TC. "This document proposes focused enhancements to the ebXML Registry Services specification that will allow the ebXML Registry services to be accessible as a set of abstract web services with concrete normative bindings specified for ebXML Messaging Service and SOAP. Currently the only normative access to the ebXML Registry is over the ebXML Messaging Service. What is lacking is a clean separation between an abstract service interface specification and multiple concrete technology specific bindings (e.g., ebXML Messaging Service). The proposal allows more flexibility and ease of access to clients by defining a second normative interface to the ebXML Registry that is based on the widely adopted SOAP protocol... The primary motivation behind this proposal is to further ebXML Registry adoption. It is our assertion that adoption is furthered by: (1) Building registry clients with limited infrastructure; (2) Enabling additional technology bindings for accessing the registry service; (3) Aligning with emerging and de facto standards. ebXML Registry adoption may be measured in the number of operational public ebXML Registries. Currently this number is one. We would like it to higher... Making ebXML Registry available as an abstract web service with additional technology bindings (e.g., SOAP) gives clients more options to interact with an ebXML Registry. A normative SOAP binding (SOAP 1.1 and SOAP with Attachments with HTTP) is proposed since SOAP has considerable mind share and adoption and has in fact been adopted by the ebXML Messaging Service itself. Numerous tools exist that make it very simple for clients to access any SOAP based web service... The following concrete deliverables are proposed: (1) XML Schema definition for [ebRIM] and [ebRS] with full support for XML namespaces, data types, constraints etc. This schema would replace Registry.dtd; (2) Abstract service definition of Registry Services; (3) WSDL description of the abstract Registry Services and related concrete SOAP binding..." See the associated files in the posting: Registry.xsd: The XML Schema for ebXML registry; Registry.wsdl: Abstract service definition for ebXML Registry service; RegistrySOAPBinding.wsdl: Concrete binding to SOAP/HTTP for the abstract ebXML Registry service. Context: OASIS ebXML Registry Technical Committee. Draft schemas are available in the .ZIP file.

• [August 07, 2001] "CommerceNet to Assist in Next Phase of UN's ebXML Initiative for eCommerce. Will Provide Support for Recently Formed eBusiness Transition Working Group (eBTWG) to Continue UN's ebXML Initiative." - "The United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) today reaffirmed its continuing role in pioneering the development of XML standards for electronic business. With its acceptance of an in-kind donation from CommerceNet, UN/CEFACT will be able to continue its efforts to standardize ebXML, a suite of specifications that enables enterprises to conduct business over the Internet. CommerceNet's in-kind donation will provide administrative and logistical support of UN/CEFACT's eBTWG (eBusiness Transition Working Group). Established in July 2001, eBTWG identifies specific work items necessary to complete the ebXML Business Process and Core components projects, including business processes, core components, and architectures...As a transitional working group, eBTWG will spearhead the ebXML initiative until the Electronic Business Working Group (eBWG) is established. 'We are delighted that CommerceNet has agreed to join our efforts in developing worldwide standards to further enable electronic commerce,' says Ray Walker, Chair of the UN/CEFACT Steering Group. 'CommerceNet's support provides resources to continue our critical ebXML work.' Klaus-Dieter Naujok, the newly appointed Chair of the eBTWG, and Chief Scientific Officer of IONA Technologies agrees, adding that 'CommerceNet provides eBTWG with the opportunity to take ebXML work items to the next level. Organizations worldwide have committed to the ebXML initiative, and now UN/CEFACT can ensure that global standards for using XML to conduct electronic business will become reality.' Fred Sollish, Program Leader for CommerceNet's Evolving Supply Chain Initiatives, will manage the support team for eBTWG. Plans are underway to host three working forums during the upcoming months. These forums are for all individuals, groups, and companies wanting to contribute to the development of ebXML and eCommerce standards. The first forum will be held in California in mid-October, followed by a session tentatively scheduled in southern Europe in January 2002 and Asia in May 2002."

• [August 01, 2001] "The Open Applications Group Announces Support for ebXML. OAGI to incorporate electronic business messaging specification from United Nations trade and technology body and OASIS into over 182 mature Business Object Documents (BODs) or XML-based business messages." - "The Open Applications Group, Inc. (OAGI), the largest publisher of XML-based business messages in the world, today announced plans to integrate the ebXML specification into the 182 business transaction standards currently published by the organization. EbXML was developed in an open process jointly sponsored by the UN/CEFACT and OASIS (Organization for Structured Information Standards) to standardize XML-based messaging and information interchange in Internet transactions between companies. UN/CEFACT is the United Nations body that develops policy and technology to facilitate trade and electronic business worldwide. The OAGI Integration Specification (OAGIS) defines over 182 XML-based business objects (BODs) for business-to-business and application-to-application integration in e-Commerce, purchasing, manufacturing, logistics, human resource management and finance. It is expected that OAGI support for ebXML will significantly accelerate broad-based adoption of this specification. OAGI is currently believed to have the largest installed based of any XML-based set of business messages. 'We expect that ebXML and OAGIS will work hand in glove,' said David Connelly, president and CEO of OAGI. 'ebXML provides a technical framework for transactions that is international in scope. We offer a large, international installed base supporting a mature set of XML-based business object documents that facilitate hands-free interoperability within and between companies. Both standards are horizontal in nature and can be used in almost any industry sector.' According to Connelly, the latest release (v. 7.1) of the business process based Open Applications Group Integration Specification (OAGIS) contains the largest and richest set of XML Document Type Definition (DTD) files in the world. 'It goes the farthest towards defining the 'digital dial tone' that organizations require to do business in the emerging World of e-Commerce and e-Business,' he said. The OAGI is a non-profit consortium of technology providers and end-user organizations. The organization develops best practices and process based XML content for eBusiness and Application Integration. It is the world's largest publisher of XML based content for business software interoperability and the only XML development organization supporting 'end to end' integration. That includes technology for business-to-business, application to application and application to execution systems transactions. Member company teams have built a consensus-based framework for business software application interoperability and a repeatable process for quickly developing high quality business content and XML representations of that content." See "Open Applications Group."

• [August 28, 2001] "webMethods and Covisint Unveil ebXML Proof of Concept at Autotech 2001. Companies Demonstrate Universal Document Translation for Ebusiness Through Public Exchange." - "webMethods, Inc. and Covisint "will reveal an AIAG sponsored Proof of Concept (POC) demonstrating the ability to facilitate electronic transactions through the global automotive exchange using the ebXML format. This POC also exhibits the capability of the webMethods integration platform to support a variety of electronic document formats and standards - both XML and EDI - accelerating e-commerce through public exchanges by leveraging participants' IT investments in legacy systems... The demonstration will be hosted by Covisint in booth #726 at AutoTech 2001. The demo will feature a typical electronic transaction between a manufacturer and supplier facilitated through Covisint utilizing the webMethods integration platform. Multiple electronic document standards, including EDI, OAG, and ebXML, will be utilized, transformed, and re-converted through this end-to-end transaction. In the demonstration scenario, Covisint will act as an intermediary between an automotive manufacturer and supplier. The manufacturer will send an EDI-based Forecast/Material Release document to Covisint. This forecast will be transformed - based on the requirements of the individual supplier - into an OAG document and routed to the supplier using ebXML. The supplier will return an OAG Advanced Shipping Notice (ASN) using ebXML back to Covisint. The ASN will be transformed - based on the requirements of the manufacturer - into an EDI-based Advanced Shipping Notice document and transmitted to the manufacturer. Covisint, the supplier, and the manufacturer will all be connected in real-time, and the entire manufacturing forecast and notification process will be managed using the webMethods integration platform..."

• [August 01, 2001] "OpenTravel Alliance Endorses ebXML." - "Industry support for ebXML continues to build as the international travel consortium, OpenTravel Alliance (OTA), announced endorsement of ebXML in its new specification. ebXML, sponsored by UN/CEFACT and OASIS, provides a standard method to exchange messages, conduct trading relationships, communicate data in common terms and define and register business processes. OTA released for member review new specifications for requesting availability and booking reservations in the airline and car rental industries. These OTA specifications unite OTA and Hospitality Industry Technology Integration Standards (HITIS) respective customer profiles into one comprehensive profile. In conjunction with the Travel Technology Initiative, (TTI), based in the United Kingdom, OTA also released draft specifications that provide a message exchange between wholesalers and tour operators for booking holiday package tours. These specifications will utilize the ebXML secure messaging structure as a recommended reference envelope layer that provides OTA specification users with a unified, interoperable solution. OTA's next publication, projected for November 2001, will map the OTA infrastructure to the ebXML Message Handling Service specification, v1.0. 'Industry groups developing their own XML-based specifications can't operate as islands. Cross-industry communication is as important as exchanging messages within a community,' explained OTA President Mike Kistner, Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Best Western International. 'By recommending ebXML, we ensure that OTA messages adhere to the international standard and enable implementations of OTA specifications to meet the requirements of the global marketplace.' [And] 'Endorsement by OTA is a major milestone for ebXML. The travel industry joins other communities who have integrated ebXML, including automotive, information technology, electronic components and semiconductor manufacturing and retail,' noted Bill Smith of Sun Microsystems, president of OASIS and member of the ebXML Executive Committee. Smith referenced similar announcements of ebXML support from Covisint, the Global Commerce Initiative (GCI), Open Applications Group and RosettaNet... The OpenTravel Alliance develops communications specifications to allow for the efficient and effective exchange of travel industry information via the Internet. With over 150 members representing influential names in all sectors of the travel industry, OTA is comprised of representatives from the airlines, car rental agencies, hotels, leisure suppliers, non-suppliers, tour operators, and trade associations. These travel industries, together with an OTA interoperability committee to coordinate their efforts, are developing open Internet-compatible messages using XML data terms." See "OpenTravel Alliance (OTA)."

• [November 28, 2001] "ebXML Messaging Interoperability Pilot Garners Cross Industry Support. Initiative draws support from Global Retail and Automotive Industries." - "Drummond Group Inc. (DGI), a leading interoperability conformance consultancy, officially announced the launch of the ebXML Messaging Interoperability pilot. The goal of the pilot, slated to run from October 2001 through February 2002, is to demonstrate the exchange of ebXML Messaging and to produce the first group of interoperable off-the-shelf products for these supporting industry groups Global Commerce Initiative and the Standards for Technology in Automotive Retail... Rik Drummond, Drummond Group Inc. CEO, says, 'Interoperability in this messaging layer is critical to ensure that all other ebXML components and other industry standards that have endorsed ebXML Messaging, such the Open Applications Group, can also be successful. It is vital that these efforts span cross industries for broader adoption of the specification. Our experience in EDI over the Internet messaging has shown that user driven interoperability testing is critical to adoption of the standard. DGI is excited to set this in motion for ebXML.' ebXML Messaging specifically focuses on the means to transmit a document (payload) from one party to another, possibly via intermediaries. This protocol standardizes the way B2B transactions are transmitted among all sizes of companies from the Large Enterprise (LE) to the Small & Medium Enterprise (SME). ebXML Messaging does not define the business processes or the content of the messages being sent. ebXML Messaging only concerns itself with the secure and reliable transmission of the payload... The current pilot (Phase One) will test the messaging and security issues of ebXML. Use cases from Global Retail and Automotive Retail industries have been used to build the test plans to ensure the developing products are in line with industry needs. All lessons learned are being fed back into the OASIS ebXML Messaging Workgroup and the OASIS Interoperability and Conformance Workgroup to incorporate in future versions of the specification. Subsequent pilots, in 2002 (Phase Two) and 2003 (Phase Three) are planned which will test additional layers of the ebXML specification along with the ebXML messaging layer."

• [July 23, 2001] "Global Commerce Initiative Launches ebXML Messaging Interoperability Conformance Pilot. 'Critical Step in Adoption,' Says Rik Drummond, Vs.1 Chair ebXML Messaging Specification." - "The Global Commerce Initiative announced today they would launch the 'ebXML Messaging Interoperability Conformance Pilot.' Drummond Group Inc. will facilitate the interoperability testing of messaging software between various vendors to develop recommendations for implementations of these standards. 'Standards are often developed and not adopted,' says Rik Drummond, Chief Scientist, Drummond Group Inc. 'There was a tremendous amount of work in developing ebXML and the ebXML messaging specification. Interoperability testing ensures that this work will get adopted by the user community quickly and on a global scale.' 'It is our principle within the Global Commerce Initiative to test the standards and recommendations we are endorsing,' states Peter Jordan, Director IS Strategic Projects Kraft Foods International, Member of the GCI Executive Board and Co-Chair of the Business Process Group. 'Our XML pilots have clearly shown that messaging systems were not interoperable and this pilot is a big step forward in providing this missing bridge.' Drummond Group Inc. is now formally soliciting participation in the ebXML Messaging Interoperability Conformance Pilot."

• [June 21, 2001] * See the revised version, June 27, 2001, and the notice. "Progressing the UN/CEFACT e-Business Standards Development Strategy." From United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation And Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT). UN/CEFACT Steering Group (CSG) E-Business Team. General CSG eBTeam/2001/EBT0001 16-June-2001. "The UN/CEFACT Plenary endorsed the proposed strategy for achieving its e-Business vision 1 at its March 2001 meeting. Subsequently, the UN/CEFACT Steering Group (CSG) and OASIS announced the successful completion of the development stage of ebXML and reached an agreement for the allocation of responsibility for maintenance and further development of ebXML specifications. Under the agreement, UN/CEFACT will be responsible for Business Processes and Core Components. OASIS will be responsible for maintaining and advancing a series of technical specifications. Jointly, UN/CEFACT and OASIS will be responsible for marketing and developing the technical architecture specification. The CSG believe the most effective way forward is to bring together the expertise and resources of the UN/EDIFACT Working Group (EWG), the Business Process Analysis Working Group (BPAWG), the Codes Working Group (CDWG), and the Business Process and Core Component work from the ebXML initiative. The result is the consolidation of all these efforts into a new Working Group, the e-Business Working Group, that will be able to address the needs of all its users. This initiative will require considerable planning and consultation if it is to achieve its objectives within the projected time scale. To lead this process, the CSG has established a special e-Business Team to undertake the initial coordination and development work. This paper is the first deliverable of the e-Business Team. It provides the description and responsibilities of the new e-Business Working Group. ['This paper is intended to provide a notional description of the proposed e-Business Working Group and likely responsibilities. It is by no means fully inclusive of all requirements that will eventually be identified. It is intended to establish a baseline and context within which meaningful discussion and alternative proposals can be developed. All aspects of the organisation as well as the various duties will be confirmed through the approval of Mandates and Terms of Reference for the e-Business Working Group and each subgroup.'] See the communiqué from Ray Walker, "UN/CEFACT's Proposal for a New Electronic Business Working Group."

• [June 21, 2001]   UN/CEFACT and OASIS Announce New ebXML Technical Committees.    UN/CEFACT and OASIS, sponsors of the ebXML electronic business specifications, "today announced the formation of new technical committees (TC) within OASIS to carry forward the the infrastructure portions of the ebXML work. ebXML specifications, which provide a standard method for companies to exchange business messages, conduct trading relationships, communicate data and define and register business processes, were recently approved, marking a successful 18-month initial development phase. To continue ebXML maintenance and enhancements, OASIS has formed the ebXML Messaging TC, the ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement TC and the ebXML Implementation, Interoperability and Conformance TC. Members of the existing OASIS Registry/Repository TC have expanded their charter to embrace the ebXML Registry/Repository Specification. UN/CEFACT plans to form a working group for ebXML business process and core components in the near future. Together, OASIS and UN/CEFACT will continue to manage ebXML Technical Architecture and Marketing Awareness functions." [Full context]

• [June 08, 2001] "Understanding ebXML. Untangling the business Web of the future." By David Mertz, Ph.D. (Phenomenological unifier, Gnosis Software, Inc.). From IBM developerWorks. June 2001. ['ebXML is a big project with a lot of pieces. In this article David Mertz outlines how the pieces all fit together. This overview provides an introduction to the ebXML concept and then looks a bit more specifically at the representation of business processes, an important starting point for ebXML implementations. Two short bits of sample code demonstrate the ProcessSpecification DTD and a package of collaborations.'] "When you read about ebXML, it's difficult to get a handle on exactly what it is -- and on what it isn't. The 'eb' in ebXML stands for 'electronic business,' and you can pronounce the phrase as 'electronic business XML,' 'e-biz XML,' 'e-business XML,' or simply 'ee-bee-ex-em-el.' On one hand, ebXML seems to promise a grand unification of everything businesses do to communicate with each other. On the other hand, one could be forgiven for thinking that ebXML amounts to little more than a pious, but vacuous, declaration that existing standards are worth following. As with every 'next big thing,' the truth lies somewhere in the middle... Sorting out ebXML involves a few steps. Perhaps the first thing necessary for understanding the details of ebXML is to digest an alphabet soup of new acronyms and other special terms. There are a number of these terms in the sidebar (ebXML terminology) to consider before looking at the whole 'vision' of ebXML interactions. Additional terms fit into the entire system, but these particular terms make a good starting point. With this new vocabulary in mind, and a bit of the following background on where ebXML comes from, you can begin to make sense of how all of the differing processes in ebXML hold together. After describing what ebXML does (at least in outline) at the beginning of this article, a final section looks in more detail at the Business Process Specification Schema, which makes up one of the most important elements of ebXML's underlying infrastructure... The UN/CEFACT Modeling Methodology (UMM), which utilizes UML, may be instrumental in modeling the ebXML Business Processes. However, such modeling is simply a recommendation, not a requirement. In any case, since this article targets XML developers and does not address OOD (object-oriented design), it is more interesting herein to look at the representation of the models in XML documents conformant to the Business Process Specification DTD and XML Schema. The DTD (named 'ebXMLProcessSpecification-v1.00.dtd') appears, at this time, to be the primary rule representation. Both this DTD and a W3C XML Schema, which is (presumably) semantically and syntactically compatible, may be found in the EbXML_BPschema_1.0 recommendation... ... The approval of ebXML specifications is moving along at a fairly rapid pace (certainly for a standards organization). My own estimation is that it will take another year or two to shake out all of the issues and details for such an ambitious vision. It appears, however, that ebXML is on the way to widespread use a few years down the road. Now is the time, therefore, for businesses to begin a serious consideration of their own ebXML implementation plans." Note especially the sidebar, "ebXML Terminology."

• [June 19, 2001] "Leaders of the DISA Registry Initiative Issue Call for Participation." - "The Data Interchange Standards Association (DISA) released [June 02, 2001] a call for individuals and companies to take part in the DISA Registry Initiative (DRIve). DRIve will seek contributions of software, systems, and technical expertise to create the architecture for and operations of a registry of data objects developed by standards organizations affiliated with DISA. These organizations include: (1) Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12; (2) OpenTravel Alliance (OTA); (3) Interactive Financial eXchange (IFX) Forum; (4) Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization (MISMO); (5) Open Philanthropy eXchange (OPX) Forum; (6) Hotel Electronic Distribution Network Association (HEDNA)... The DRIve registry will meet the requirements of the Electronic Business Extensible Markup Language (ebXML) registry/repository specifications, which include the Registry Services Specification, version 1.0, and the Registry Information Model, version 1.0, approved on May 11. DRIve will also follow other approved ebXML specifications and technical reports affecting the operation of the registry... DRIve will include the basic functions of ebXML registries and its interactions with a DISA repository, as spelled out in the relevant specifications... 'This initiative is very important to the ManTech Enterprise Integration Center (e-IC),' said Robert S. Kidwell, Vice President and Senior Technical Director for ManTech e-IC. 'The e-IC team has embraced XML in all of its leading electronic commerce and electronic data interchange applications such as the U.S. DoD customs clearance project, which involves the shipment of military cargo within eleven foreign countries, and the U.S. DoD Medical E-CAT system, which is a distributed Web application for DoD procurement of key medical supplies. We feel that the DISA initiative will provide the initial foundation for migrating the traditional X12 EDI semantics into a framework that is consistent with that of the ebXML distributed registry and repository vision'." See also "XML Registry and Repository." [source]

• [May 14, 2001]   Final ebXML Specifications Approved in Vienna.    An announcement from UN/CEFACT and OASIS reports on the meeting of 11-May-2001 in which ebXML participants approved a core set of electronic business data specifications. From the announcement: "ebXML, which began as an 18-month initiative sponsored by UN/CEFACT and OASIS, is a modular suite of specifications that enables enterprises of any size and in any geographical location to conduct business over the Internet. Using ebXML, companies now have a standard method to exchange business messages, conduct trading relationships, communicate data in common terms and define and register business processes. Approved specifications include ebXML Technical Architecture, Business Process Specification Schema, Registry Information Model, Registry Services, ebXML Requirements, Message Service and Collaboration-Protocol Profile and Agreement. Accepted ebXML Technical Reports include: Business Process and Business Information Analysis Overview, Business Process Analysis Worksheets & Guidelines, E-Commerce Patterns, Catalog of Common Business Processes, Core Component Overview, Core Component Discovery and Analysis, Context and Re-Usability of Core Components, Guide to the Core Components Dictionary, Naming Convention for Core Components, Document Assembly and Context Rules, Catalogue of Context Drivers, Core Component Dictionary, Core Component Structure and Technical Architecture Risk Assessment. Adoption, implementation and maintenance of the ebXML specifications will be conducted by UN/CEFACT and OASIS under the auspices of a Memorandum of Understanding, which was signed by the two organizations in Vienna. Coordination of this work will be achieved through a joint UN/CEFACT and OASIS management committee." [Full context]

• [May 31, 2001] "UN/CEFACT and OASIS Introduce ebXML-DEV Mail List." - "UN/CEFACT and OASIS has announced the formation of ebXML-DEV, a mail list for the ebXML development community. Hosted by OASIS, ebXML-DEV provides an open forum for serious ebXML developers and those interested in implementing ebXML to share information and experiences. Today's announcement follows the recent ratification of the ebXML specifications, which facilitate open trade between organizations regardless of size by enabling XML to be used in a consistent manner to exchange electronic business data. 'Now that we've reached our milestone of developing ebXML, we want to support those involved in implementing the specifications,' said Klaus-Dieter Naujok of IONA, member of the UN/CEFACT Steering Committee. 'The ebXML-DEV mail list fosters the productive discussion of ebXML topics and provides a valuable resource for those seeking practical information.' 'ebXML-DEV is a self-moderated forum for the open exchange of ideas,' explained Karl Best, OASIS director of technical operations. 'OASIS will host the list as a service to the community, but the content of the discussions will be driven by the participants themselves.' Individuals may subscribe to ebXML-DEV online at http://www.ebxml.org. ebXML, sponsored by UN/CEFACT and OASIS, is a modular suite of specifications that enables enterprises of any size and in any geographical location to conduct business over the Internet. Using ebXML, companies now have a standard method to exchange business messages, conduct trading relationships, communicate data in common terms and define and register business processes. UN/CEFACT is the United Nations body whose mandate covers worldwide policy and technical development in the area of trade facilitation and electronic business. Headquartered in Geneva, it has developed and promoted many tools for the facilitation of global business processes including UN/EDIFACT, the international EDI standard. Its current work programme includes such topics as Simpl-edi and Object Oriented EDI and it strongly supports the development and implementation of open, interoperable global standards and specifications for electronic business."

• [July 23, 2001] "ebXML Registry/Repository Implementation." Available July 2001. "This first implementation from Sun is based on the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technology. The Registry/Repository implementation can be used to submit, store, retrieve, and manage resources to facilitate ebXML-based business-to-business partnerships and transactions. Submitted information may be, for example, XML schema and documents, business process descriptions, business context descriptions, UML models, business collaboration information, Core Components, or even software components. The Registry/Repository implementation uses EJB technology, which reduces development complexity while providing automatic support for middleware services such as database connectivity, transaction management, scalability, and security. With this download you will receive the following main components: (1) Registry Information Model; (2) Registry Services; (3) Security Model; (4) Data Access API; (5) Java Objects Binding Classes; (6) JSP Tag Library... To install and deploy the Registry/Repository distribution you will require a J2EE environment. We suggest using the following software components: Netscape Communicator 4.72 or higher or Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher; JDK 1.2.2 or later; Application server environment; this implementation includes complete instructions for deploying the Registry/Repository using the following iPlanet Application Server environment components [...], Database server; Sybase or Oracle are recommended to be used for the Registry database..." See the earlier announcement of "Sun Releases The First Java Technology-Based Implementation of eBXML Registry and Repository for Web Services."

• [June 04, 2001] "Sun Releases The First Java Technology-Based Implementation of eBXML Registry and Repository for Web Services." - "Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced the industry's first implementation of the Electronic Business XML (ebXML) Registry/Repository specification, based on Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technology. Distributed, scalable registries and repositories for business processes and transaction characteristics are essential to the growth of Web services. The ebXML specifications, which were developed through the joint efforts of OASIS and UN/CEFACT, were finalized last month. The ebXML Registry/Repository Specification provides a registry for advertising and discovering Web services, like a phone book. This specification also includes a repository for the elements needed to conduct Web services, such as business process models, schemas and documents, and trading information. 'With the publication of this reference implementation to developers using J2EE technology, Sun is helping the Java technology development community to harness the power of Web services by continuing to provide timely support for key enabling standards, such as ebXML,' said Bill Smith, Director of Technology Development, Sun Microsystems, Inc. 'Web services registries are going to be an important component of any Web services solution. By using Sun's reference implementation of the ebXML registry, developers can significantly reduce the time required to develop and deploy Web services.' Any developer using the Java platform who needs a registry to submit, store, and retrieve XML resources can use this freely available reference implementation from Sun to build a complete and robust cross-platform solution. 'You can pretty much take this implementation as-is and plug it into any J2EE platform-enabled application server, link it to a database, and you're ready to go,' said Smith. The Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) specification is for Web services, but was not designed to act as a repository. The ebXML registry is extremely complementary to UDDI. It expands the capabilities of UDDI, providing registry service application programming interfaces (APIs), a database abstraction layer and a security model. The registry can be downloaded at http://www.sun.com/xml, with availability in early July [2001]."

• [May 18, 2001] "ebXML: It Ain't Over 'til it's Over." By Alan Kotok. From XML.com. May 16, 2001. ['The final meeting of the Electronic Business XML initiative in Vienna marked the 18-month deadline set for the project, yet there is still plenty left to do.'] "At the Electronic Business XML (ebXML) meeting in Vienna, Austria, 7-11 May 2001, the 150 participants approved the specifications and technical reports defining the ebXML technical architecture. The group also held its most complete proof-of-concept demonstrations at the midpoint of the meeting. But the session ended with ebXML's most promising features, interoperable business semantics, still incomplete. This meeting marked the end of ebXML's 18-month self-imposed deadline that began in November 1999, and the topic of ebXML's future direction took up much of the participants' time and energy. Until this meeting, the ebXML leadership put off any serious discussion of its post-Vienna future. In Vienna, participants got their first chance to see ebXML's new incarnation. EbXML is a joint initiative of Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) and the UN's Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT). Its goal is to develop a set of specifications to allow any business of any size in any industry to do business with any other entity in any other industry anywhere in the world. The group's work has focused particularly on making e-business possible for smaller companies, generally left out of electronic data interchange (EDI) in the past. In this partnership, OASIS brings XML knowledge and experience, while UN/CEFACT, the group that developed and manages the UN/EDIFACT EDI standard, offers the business expertise... At the opening general session, Ray Walker, of UN/CEFACT and one of the ebXML executives, said his organization and OASIS would divide up management of the technical teams, where UN/CEFACT would continue the work on business content and OASIS would handle further work on infrastructure. The groups would create a coordination committee to jointly publish the approved specifications, with further details released during the week...OASIS and UN/CEFACT, according to the new agreement, will jointly publish the ebXML documents, including specifications, technical reports, white papers, and reference documents. In response to an audience question, Walker said that the ebXML site would continue 'for the moment' to provide one source for all ebXML documentation. The Vienna meeting also provided a discussion of future implementation strategies for ebXML. At a briefing for visitors to the meeting, Jon Bosak of Sun Microsystems, and former co-chair of the W3C's XML working group, laid out a three-stage process for businesses to implement ebXML. (1) Standard infrastructure: ...as a result of its current work, ebXML can immediately offer a package of standard message structures, registries and repositories, company e-business profiles, and trading partner agreements. It would allow even the smallest businesses to send ebXML-compliant messages by e-mail. Larger companies can also take part in ebXML when it suits their purposes, for example, as a complement to their EDI transactions. Registries can start providing the message specifications, industry vocabularies, and profiles of potential trading partners. (2) Standard electronic messages: provide standardized messages defined by individuals or organizations. The standard messages would encourage the development of off-the-shelf software solutions and begin the process of replacing paper documents with electronic counterparts. By 2003, Bosak expects repositories to store and registries to index business process models and standard messages, with the models using UML, DTDs, or prose representations. (3) Single standard semantic framework: a standard electronic semantic framework would automatically generate standard schemas and messages. Business models would represent complete top-down analysis and allow for dynamic modification as new business relationships emerged..."

• [May 08, 2001] "UN/CEFACT and OASIS Meeting Showcases ebXML for Healthcare and B2B." - "The final meeting of the 18-month ebXML initiative, sponsored by UN/CEFACT and OASIS, will feature the most extensive ebXML proof-of-concept yet demonstrated and the first to showcase ebXML's security specification. In Vienna on 9 May 2001, international standards groups, Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG), Health Level Seven (HL7), Open Applications Group (OAG), RosettaNet, SWIFT and EDI X12, will team with 28 vendors from around the world to implement the ebXML specifications and demonstrate how ebXML can be used to meet the needs of electronic business today. The demonstration will be part of a week-long ebXML meeting, during which participants are expected to ratify the ebXML specifications and begin the next phase of continued development, implementation and maintenance. The healthcare track of the POC will use HL7 messages and documents as payloads within ebXML transport and routing envelopes. The demo scenario will begin with a patient visit to a physician's office. The office will send a registration message pre-admitting the patient to a hospital for testing. At the hospital, the patient will be examined and lab work will be ordered, the order being transmitted via ebXML to a remote lab. The record of the original patient encounter in the physician's office, plus the registration message, lab order and lab results will be sent to two clinical information portals where the virtual patient record can be collected and accessed. The ebXML POC electronic business track simulates a complete end-to-end B2B transaction, using messages from RosettaNet, OAG, EDI X12, SWIFT and ebXML Core Components. ebXML vendors play the roles of buyer, supplier, registry, marketplace, credit authorization agency and financial institution. The scenario begins with the buyer discovering the seller through the ebXML registry. It then highlights a seller catalogue update through the e-marketplace, followed by the buyer's purchase order request. A request for credit is sent by the e-marketplace to the authorization agency, which responds with an invoice. Following an advance shipment notification, the credit agency transmits messages to the banks of both the buyer and the seller to reflect the completion of the end-to-end business scenario. 'The ability of these 28 vendors to demonstrate ebXML on this scale is a remarkable achievement,' observed Sid Askary of Intalio, ebXML Proof Of Concept Project Team Leader. 'Execution of these complex business and healthcare scenarios and interoperability among so many early adopters is a sign of success for ebXML.' ebXML (www.ebXML.org) is an International Initiative established by UN/CEFACT and OASIS in late 1999 with a mandate to undertake an 18-month program of work to research and identify the technical basis upon which the global implementation of XML (Extensible Markup Language) can be standardized. The goal of ebXML is to facilitate open trade between organizations regardless of size by enabling XML to be used in a consistent manner to exchange electronic business data."

• [May 11, 2001] "ebXML: E-Business Language of Choice? How an XML Specification Strives to Create One Global Market." By Don Kiely. In InformationWeek Isue 836 (May 07, 2001), pages 79-84. "The grassroots ebXML effort has created a set of standard business processes using XML to create a global online marketplace. The challenge is making a framework that's generic, yet sweeping enough to accommodate large and small firms around the world. bXML, the United Nations-backed standard for E-business, aims to create a single online marketplace where companies of any size or nationality can collaborate and conduct business around the globe. By creating a standard way for companies to carry out common business practices, ebXML promoters hope to lower entry barriers and let small and midsize companies from the far corners of the globe join in the economic advances that their larger brethren already enjoy. It's ironic that this grassroots effort had its genesis in NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization -- a pan-governmental bureaucracy. But the initiative seems to be resonating around the world, with supporters ranging from IBM and Sun Microsystems to government agencies such as the Saudi Export Development Corp. and small businesses like Martin's Famous Pastry Shoppe. The goal of ebXML -- being undertaken by about 1,000 participating organizations -- is to create a set of standards that will let companies use XML for E-business. The underlying tenet of ebXML is business workflow and common business processes that every business should be able to understand and use. You could think of ebXML as the successor to electronic data interchange. Where EDI delineated standard E-business documents such as purchase orders, ebXML specifies common business processes and an architecture for carrying out those processes over the Internet. EbXML is being spearheaded by the United Nations Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, as well as the Economic Commission for Europe's Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business. EbXML is nearing the end of its planned 18-month gestation period this month, with the publication of a complete set of specifications for using XML as the communication format for global business. The fate of ebXML after May is still undecided, but if the roster of computer vendors and consulting companies participating in the work is any indication, ebXML is likely to make its way into software and service offerings during the coming months. The draft ebXML architecture specifications describe a complex infrastructure for interactions between trading partners and a repository of XML documents from which business processes can be modeled. The architecture provides: (1) A way to define business processes and their associated messages and content; (2) A way to register and discover business process sequences with related message exchanges; (3) A way to define company profiles; (4) A way to define trading-partner agreements; (5) A uniform message transport mechanism... Several major security requirements must be addressed for ebXML to be accepted: (1) Confidentiality: Only the sender and receiver can interpret a document's contents; (2) Authentication of sender: Assurance of the sender's identity; (3) Authentication of receiver: Assurance of the receiver's identity; (4) Integrity: Assurance that the message contents haven't been altered while en route; (5) Nonrepudiation of origin: The sender cannot deny having sent the message; (6) Nonrepudiation of receipt: The receiver can't deny having received the message; and (7) Archiving: It must be possible to reconstruct the semantic intent of a document several years after the creation of the document. The biggest challenge of ebXML is to create a framework for automating trading-partner interactions that's both generic enough for implementation across the entire range of business processes and expressive enough to be more effective than ad hoc implementations between trading partners. The ebXML specification for the application of XML-based assembly and context rules describes how business rules are formed. Given that companies around the world operate in many different ways, it's unlikely that any single standard could possibly incorporate those many variations. No matter where ebXML heads after May, there will be some useful designs for global business interchange. Even if ebXML fizzles, it will have been a useful exercise that can make the world even smaller than it already is." In the same context: Differences between ebXML and UDDI.

• [May 08, 2001] "ebXML and the Road to Universal Standards." By Dave Carr. In InternetWorld (May 08, 2001). "Another chapter in the quest for universal electronic business standards will end this week in Vienna, Austria, where the ebXML organization is meeting to wrap up its 18-month project. It's still probably an early chapter, with major plot twists yet to come, but it does move the story forward. One encouraging sign: the ripple effect of independently developed XML specifications' being reconciled. The ebXML group recently agreed to incorporate the SOAP protocol, which is popular with many XML Web services enthusiasts, into the ebXML messaging specification, and the version that's going up for a vote this week is based on an extended version of SOAP. Those extensions, in turn, could wind up being incorporated into the World Wide Web Consortium's XML Protocol (XP) effort, which is supposed to produce the successor to SOAP. Previously, this had been shaping up as a typical industry battle, with Sun Microsystems favoring ebXML and Microsoft talking up SOAP (the Simple Object Access Protocol), which is fundamental to its .Net initiative. Then RosettaNet, the group behind the electronics industry's highly advanced electronic commerce standards, said it would incorporate ebXML messaging into the next revision of its standards, rather than continuing to develop its own messaging specification. Carry this convergence forward another couple of steps, and we should see agreement on messaging standards among Microsoft's BizTalk, RosettaNet, ebXML, and other electronic-commerce frameworks. On the other hand, messaging is just one component of ebXML, and there are other areas in which it still needs to be reconciled with competing initiatives. For example, there's overlap between the ebXML registry and repository specifications and UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration), another widely supported Web services technology. The reason the ebXML organization was formed in the first place was to bring together electronic-commerce initiatives from OASIS, an industry consortium, and UN/CEFACT, the United Nations organization that created the international standards for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). CEFACT, the Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business, was looking at addressing the demand for a modernized version of EDI that would use XML and the Internet while OASIS was trying to solve essentially the same problems from an XML-centric worldview... What ebXML tries to do is establish a baseline framework that can be used to solve problems that may cross industry boundaries. It also aspires to promote a generalized model that those vertical industry groups can build on. To implement ebXML, you're supposed to model your business processes using the Unified Modeling Language, a standard supported by object modeling tools such as Rational Rose, and the UN/CEFACT Modeling Methodology. Business partners exchange Collaboration Protocol Profiles and use them to forge Collaborative Protocol Agreements (an extension of IBM's Trading Partner Agreement specifications). Further, it tries to specify some common business processes for interaction that can be used within this scheme..."

• [April 17, 2001] "Electronic Business XML (ebXML) Requirements Specification Version 1.04." By ebXML Requirements Team. Project team lead: Mike Rawlins. "March 19, 2001." Draft Specification for Review. End of Review Period: 30 April 2001. "This ebXML Requirements Specification represents the work of the ebXML Requirements Project Team. It defines ebXML and the ebXML effort, articulates business requirements for ebXML, and defines specific requirements that shall be addressed by the various ebXML project teams in preparing their deliverables. The scope of the ebXML business requirements is to meet the needs for the business side of both business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) activities. Consumer requirements of the B2C model are beyond the scope of the ebXML technical specifications. Application-to-application (A2A) exchanges within an enterprise may also be able to use the ebXML technical specifications, however ebXML A2A solutions shall not be developed at the expense of simplified B2B and B2C solutions. The business requirements to be addressed by the ebXML initiative are divided into nine core areas - General Business, Electronic Business, Globalization, Openness , Usability/Interoperability, Security, Legal, Digital Signature, and Organizational..." [cache]

• [April 25, 2001] "RosettaNet to Support Messaging Services Specification Developed by ebXML Initiative. Universal Messaging Service Complements RosettaNet's Vertical e-Business Process Standards." - "RosettaNet today announced its intent to support the ebXML Messaging Service Specification for the secure transfer, routing and packaging (TRP) of electronic information. Future releases of RosettaNet's Implementation Framework (RNIF), which serves as a guide for e-business process development and implementation, will include support for the ebXML Messaging Service Specification, in an effort to achieve interoperability goals across industries. A messaging service standard typically specifies how information or an e-business transaction is physically packaged, transferred and routed securely via the Internet. As an underlying communication protocol, a single messaging service standard can be used universally, regardless of industry or geography, to transport electronic information between trading partners. This announcement is among the first in a series of cross-industry XML standards cross-industry initiatives from RosettaNet, the leader in global e-business process standards for the Information Technology (IT), Electronic Components (EC) and Semiconductor Manufacturing (SM) industries. ebXML was established by UN/CEFACT, a United Nations body tasked with facilitating international trade and developing technical solutions for electronic business. OASIS, an international not-for- profit consortium promotes the open, collaborative development of interoperability specifications based on XML. In support of convergence at the messaging service level, RosettaNet has formed an architecture team, headed by Dr. Arvola Chan, a principal architect on loan to RosettaNet by TIBCO Software Inc., a RosettaNet partner... RosettaNet has surveyed the XML-related standards space and, as a service to the industry, has developed a conceptual model that not only defines the components required for B2B business connectivity, but also enables the comparison of horizontal and vertical XML standards efforts using nine distinct layers. RosettaNet's presentation, XML Standards Components and Convergence: A RosettaNet Perspective and supporting documentation is available on its Web site." See "RosettaNet."

• [March 28, 2001]   ebXML Specifications Completed and Submitted for Quality Review Process.    A recent announcement from UN/CEFACT and OASIS reports that "all ebXML specifications have been submitted to the ebXML initiative's quality review process. These specifications are the result of more than a year's work by organizations and standards bodies around the world, which have come together to advance a common framework for global electronic business. The complete body of ebXML specifications defining business process methodology, core components, messaging, registry/repository, security, technical architecture and trading partner agreements are expected to be ratified in plenary May 2001. The ebXML Messaging Services Specification integrating SOAP is among the new specifications submitted to the ebXML review process. The effort to integrate SOAP into ebXML was started just five weeks ago. The ebXML announcement followed a proof-of-concept ebXML demonstration provided by vendors at the XML One Conference in London last week. Twenty-some companies collaborated to simulate a global, electronic business trading network using publicly available ebXML specifications. Many of these companies also issued public statements regarding their intentions to implement ebXML-compliant products in the near future." Specifications recently posted for QR include: (1) ebXML Registry Information Model Version 0.60, (2) ebXML Registry Services Specification Version 0.88, (3) ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement Specification Version 0.93, and (4) ebXML Message Service Specification: Transport, Routing & Packaging Version 0.98b. [Full context]

• [April 06, 2001] "ebXML Ropes in SOAP." By Alan Kotok. From XML.com. April 04, 2001. ['Our report on the latest happenings in ebXML covers their adoption of SOAP, and takes stock as ebXML nears the end of its project.'] "The Electronic Business XML (ebXML) project released three more technical specifications for review on 28-March-2001, including a new draft document on messaging services. This part of ebXML -- formerly known as transport, routing, and packaging -- had made more early progress than the other technical features, but it also came under more pressure to include the work of other initiatives, specifically the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). Enhancements to the original SOAP specification made it easier for ebXML to join forces. But it also marked something of a change in operation for ebXML, now more willing to make accommodations with other related initiatives in order achieve its goal of a single worldwide e-business standard... SOAP's importance extends beyond its definition of an XML-based message protocol. Several other e-business specifications based on XML -- most notably BizTalk and Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) -- use SOAP for its messaging functions. ... The technical architecture specifications approved by the ebXML plenary at its mid-February meeting in Vancouver, Canada, provide a technical map for the other ebXML project teams in developing the details of the technology. The document also provides a look ahead into the end game for the initiative. Part of that strategy includes the critical ebXML registry specifications. Companies will have most of their early encounters with ebXML through the registries, as companies download business processes, list their capabilities to conduct e-business, and search for potential trading partners. At the same time as the release of the messaging specifications, ebXML also released for review two draft specifications for registries: one for the registry services and the other for the registry information model. The registry services document spells out the functions and operations of ebXML registries, while the information model details how registries organize and index the data they represent. Also on 28 March ebXML released for review the draft trading partner profile and agreement specifications. The ebXML specifications carve out specific technically-oriented functions for trading partner information stored in registries (profiles) and the rules of the road for conducting e-business (agreements). As a result, ebXML uses the terms collaboration-protocol profiles and collaboration-protocol agreements to distinguish them from the more comprehensive trading partner profiles and agreements that contain much more than technical details. EbXML expects to finish its technical specifications in May 2000 at its last meeting in Vienna, Austria. At that time, the participants plan to take up the business process and core components specifications, the last two pieces of the technology still in development." For bibliographic details and other description, see (1) "ebXML Specifications Completed and Submitted for Quality Review Process", (2) "ebXML Integrates SOAP Into Messaging Services Specification."

• [March 06, 2001] ebXML Core Component and Business Process Specifications Available for Review. ebXML Chair Klaus-Dieter Naujok announced the availability of review specifications for ebXML Core Components and Business Process. The review materials include three Core Components reference documents and the draft Core Components specification in four parts. (1) ebXML Methodology for the Discovery and Analysis of Core Components; (2) ebXML Core Components Dictionary Entry Naming Conventions; (3) The Role of Context in The Re-Usability of Core Components and Business Processes (4) ebXML Specification for the Application of XML Based Assembly and Context Rules. Supporting documentation includes an ebXML White Paper for the eBusiness community, "Core Component and Business Process Document Overview v1.01." Comments may be sent to the CC project editor, James Whittle. The review period for the ebXML draft ends 18-March-2001. [Full context]

• [April 04, 2001] "XML DevCon Features ebXML Proof-of-Concept. BEA Systems, Bowstreet, Commerce One, Contivo, Documentum, Fujitsu, IBM, Killdara, Netfish/Iona, Schemantix, Sun Microsystems, TIE and XML Global Implement Latest ebXML Specifications in Proof-of-Concept Demo." - "Software vendors from around the world will come together to demonstrate ebXML at the XML DevCon conference in New York City on 10-April-2001. BEA Systems, Bowstreet, Commerce One, Contivo, Documentum, Fujitsu, IBM, Killdara, Netfish/Iona, Schemantix, Sun Microsystems, TIE and XML Global will together simulate a global, electronic business trading network using publicly available ebXML specifications for Messaging, Trading Partner Agreements and Registry Repository. UN/CEFACT and OASIS, sponsors of ebXML, point to this demonstration as proof of the stability of the ebXML specifications, all of which are now in the quality review process for final ratification in May 2001. 'XML DevCon will be a great opportunity for anyone involved in electronic commerce to witness ebXML in action,' stated Klaus-Dieter Naujok of Netfish Technologies, chair of ebXML and member of the UN/CEFACT Steering Group. 'These 13 vendors represent the thousands of participants from companies and organizations worldwide who have put so much effort into developing the ebXML specifications.' 'As we near completion of our 18-month initiative, we're seeing a tremendous response from the community for ebXML-compliant products,' said Bill Smith of Sun Microsystems, member of the ebXML executive committee and a president of the OASIS Board of Directors. 'ebXML vendors appreciate that the demand is there, and this demonstration is an important milestone on the road to delivery.' Attendees of XML DevCon will take a step-by-step tour of how ebXML can be used to dynamically formulate trading partnerships through a registry service and exchange electronic business transactions with a consistent XML-based messaging infrastructure. The ebXML demonstration in New York will feature actual payloads from the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) -- although ebXML can be used to exchange any type of business transactions. In addition to the 13 vendors participating in the XML One conference, Interwoven and Cisco provided software for the ebXML demonstration. NTT Communications, Savvion, Sterling Commerce, Viquity and XMLSolutions also were instrumental in the proof-of-concept development."

• [February 27, 2001] "ebXML Technical Architecture Specification Approved. Record Numbers of Organizations Convene in Vancouver as ebXML Nears Completion." - "Organizations from around the world came together in Vancouver, Canada to overwhelmingly approve the ebXML Technical Architecture Specification. Serving as a roadmap to ebXML, the Technical Architecture Specification provides the foundation for all other ebXML specifications. This announcement from the UN/CEFACT and OASIS marks the deliverable stage of ebXML, as the initiative nears its goal of delivering a complete suite of specifications in May 2001. 'Interest in ebXML continues to build at a phenomenal rate,' said Robert S. Sutor, Ph.D., of IBM, vice chair of ebXML and member of the OASIS Board of Directors. 'The ebXML Technical Architecture Specification gives implementers a clear understanding of the entire initiative and how the various ebXML specifications relate to one another.' The ebXML Technical Architecture Specification defines the relationships, interactions and basic functionality of ebXML specifications including those involving core components, business processes, registry & repository, messaging services, trading partner agreements and security. In addition, the Technical Architecture Specification provides an ebXML use case scenario and conformance guidelines... More than 350 participants from Asia, Australia, Europe and North America approved the ebXML Technical Architecture Specification. The group, which gathered in Vancouver to advance the initiative, remains open to all interested organizations and individuals. Developers and all interested parties are encouraged to review the ebXML Technical Architecture Specification at http://www.ebxml.org/specdrafts/approved_specs.htm.

• [March 27, 2001]   DISA Hosts ebXML-compliant Registry and Repository for E-Business Standards.    A recent announcment from the Data Interchange Standards Association (DISA) describes plans to create an ebXML-compliant Registry and Repository for e-business standards and related content. ebXML, as a joint initiative of the United Nations (UN/CEFACT) and OASIS, is now completing development of set of specifications that together enable a modular electronic business framework. The initial content for the DISA Registry and Repository "will include all ASC X12 EDI standards, the XML specifications being developed by DISA Affiliates, and related content. As the Secretariat to the American National Standards Institute Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12, DISA has provided a neutral forum for e-business standards development for almost 15 years, for a total of 15 annual releases and 30 subreleases. ASC X12 and the UN/EDIFACT Working Group (EWG) recently launched a joint initiative to enhance business-to-business communications by defining and validating a set of protocol-neutral e-business objects valid within ebXML specifications, UN/EDIFACT messages and X12 standards. This single set of business objects (core components) will serve as the foundation for future developments in Extensible Markup Language (XML) and any other incarnation of electronic data interchange (EDI) and XML. As part of its concurrent educational initiatives, which have long included seminars and training on EDI and XML, DISA is also launching a training program on UN/CEFACT Modeling Methodology and Unified Modeling Language (UML)." [Full context]

• [February 27, 2001]   ASC X12 and UN/EDIFACT Working Group Define Business Objects to Unify EDI and XML.    A recent announcement from the two 'global e-business standards bodies' ASC X12 and EWG describes the initiation of work to create a single set of business objects ('core components') "that are valid within the UN/EDIFACT and ASC X12 business processes. This joint initiative of the Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12 and the UN/EDIFACT Working Group (EWG) is focused on single set of business objects (core components) which would be the basis for future developments with new and emerging technologies such as Extensible Markup Language (XML). The XML standards proposed by X12 and EWG will be based on ebXML recommendations. To complement this effort, ASC X12's Process Integration Task Group (PITG) is coordinating demonstrations of modeling software tools while preparing 'How to' guides to illustrate modeling methodology concepts in an easy-to-understand manner. PITG's work will build on existing frameworks within ASC X12 and EWG and help to define the business processes and modeling." [Full context]

• [February 22, 2001] ebXML Integrates SOAP Into Messaging Services Specification. An announcement from UN/CEFACT and OASIS describes efforts now underway to "integrate the SOAP 1.1 and SOAP with Attachments specifications into the ebXML Messaging Specification. SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is designed to provide the underpinnings for messaging requirements. This development by ebXML will result in an open, widely adopted global standard for reliably transporting electronic business messages over the Internet. The ebXML Messaging Specification encompasses a set of services and protocols that allow an electronic business client to request services from electronic business servers over any application-level transport protocol, including SMTP, HTTP and others. ebXML defines a general-purpose message, with a header that supports multiple payloads, while allowing digital signatures within and among related messages. Although the header is XML, the body of the message may be XML, MIME or virtually anything digital." [details]

• [January 27, 2001] "Enabling Electronic Business with ebXML." From the ebXML Initiative. White paper. December 2000. "The vision of ebXML is to create a single global electronic marketplace where enterprises of any size and in any geographical location can meet and conduct business with each other through the exchange of XML based messages. ebXML enables anyone, anywhere, to do business with anyone else over the internet. ebXML is a set of specifications that together enable a modular, yet complete electronic business framework. If the Internet is the information highway for electronic business, then ebXML can be thought of as providing the on ramps, off ramps, and the rules of the road. The ebXML architecture provides: (1) A way to define business processes and their associated messages and content. (2) A way to register and discover business process sequences with related message exchanges. (3) A way to define company profiles. (4) A way to define trading partner agreements. (5) A uniform message transport layer. The ebXML initiative is designed for electronic interoperability, allowing businesses to find each other, agree to become trading partners and conduct business. All of these operations can be performed automatically, minimizing, and in most cases completely eliminating the need for human intervention. This streamlines electronic business through a low cost, open, standard mechanism. ebXML is global in support, scope and implementation. It is a joint initiative of the United Nations (UN/CEFACT) and OASIS, developed with global participation for global usage. Membership in ebXML is open to anyone and the initiative enjoys broad industry support with over 75 member companies, and in excess of 2,000 participants drawn from over 30 countries. Participants represent major vendors and users in the IT industry and leading vertical and horizontal industry associations. ebXML is evolutionary, not revolutionary. It is based on Internet technologies using proven, public standards such as: HTTP, TCP/IP, mime, smtp, ftp, UML, and XML. The use of public standards yields a simple and inexpensive solution that is open and vendor-neutral. ebXML can be implemented and deployed on just about any computing platform and programming language. Electronic commerce is not a new concept. For the past 25 years, companies have been exchanging information with each other electronically, based on Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) standards. Unfortunately, EDI currently requires significant technical expertise, and deploys tightly coupled, inflexible architectures. While it is possible to deploy EDI applications on public networks, they are most often deployed on expensive dedicated networks to conduct business with each other. As a result, EDI adoption has been limited to primarily large enterprises and selected trading partners, which represents a small fraction of the world's business entities. By leveraging the efforts of technical and business experts, and applying today's best practices, ebXML aims to remove these obstacles. This opens the possibility of low cost electronic business to virtually anyone with a computer and an application that is capable of reading and writing ebXML messages. Businesses of all sizes will adopt ebXML for reasons of lower development cost, flexibility, and ease of use..."

• [February 09, 2001] "ebXML Technical Architecture Specification." Version 1.0.2. By: ebXML Technical Architecture Project Team. Edited by Brian Eisenberg (DataChannel) and Duane Nickull (XML Global Technologies). 5-February-2001. "This document is a final draft for the eBusiness community. Distribution of this document is unlimited. This document will go through the formal Quality Review Process as defined by the ebXML Requirements Document. This document describes the underlying architecture for ebXML. It provides a high level overview of ebXML and describes the relationships, interactions, and basic functionality of ebXML. It should be used as a roadmap to learn: (1) what ebXML is, (2) what problems ebXML solves, and (3) core ebXML functionality and architecture. Other documents provide detailed definitions of the components of ebXML and of their inter-relationship. They include ebXML specifications on the following topics: Requirements, Business Process and Information Meta Model, Core Components, Registry and Repository. Trading Partner Information. Messaging Services. These specifications are available for download at http://www.ebxml.org." [cache]

• [February 14, 2001] "ebXML Moves Closer to Completion." By Tom Sullivan. In InfoWorld (February 12, 2001). "[Vancouver, British Columbia.] Bringing the pending technology closer to a final specification, ebXML (e-business XML) standards bodies kicked off a week's worth of meetings and working groups here Monday. ebXML is a specification for XML-based global infrastructure for e-business transactions, being driven by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) and the United Nations' Center for Trade Facilitation and E-business (UN/CEFACT). The working groups at the conference aim to further a number of ebXML pieces, including the Technical Architecture, Registry Information Model, and Registry Services specification, all of which currently are out for review. Working groups this week will also develop core competencies of ebXML, such as the Implementation Model methodology, as well as messaging and business processes. The goal is to have the final specification ready to be voted on by April 23. ebXML for the last 15 months has been driven by OASIS and UN/CEFACT, under a relationship intended to last 18 months... Bob Sular, vice chairman of the ebXML organization. pointed to the industry movement toward Web services, and the efforts of Microsoft, Sun, and Hewlett-Packard specifically, as catalysts of change in the industry that the standards bodies need to consider in the future."

• [January 13, 2001] ebXML Technical Architecture Specification Available for Public Review. The ebXML Technical Architecture Project Team has issued a draft version of the ebXML Technical Architecture Specification (4-January-2001, ebXML_TA_v1.0.doc), making it available for review by the eBusiness community. The 40-page draft specification has been edited by Duane Nickull (XML Global Technologies) and Brian Eisenberg (DataChannel), under the direction of project team leader Anders Grangard (EDI France). The current review period ends 26-January-2001. The document "describes the underlying architecture for ebXML. It provides a high level overview of ebXML and describes the relationships, interactions, and basic functionality of ebXML. It should be used as a roadmap to learn: (1) what ebXML is, (2) what problems ebXML solves, and (3) core ebXML functionality and architecture. The document is intended primarily for the ebXML Project Teams to help guide their work. Secondary audiences may include software implementers, international standards bodies, and other industry organizations... This conceptual overview introduces the following concepts and underlying architecture: (1) A standard mechanism for describing a Business Process and its associated information model. (2) A mechanism for registering and storing a Business Process and Information Meta Model so that it can be shared/reused. (3) Discovery of information about each participant including: a) The Business Processes they support, b) The Business Service Interfaces they offer in support of the Business Process, c) The Business Messages that are exchanged between their respective Business Service Interfaces, d) The technical configuration of the supported transport, security and encoding protocols. (4) A mechanism for registering the aforementioned information so that it may be discovered and retrieved. (5) A mechanism for describing a mutually agreed upon business arrangement which may be derived from information provided by each participant from item 3 above. (6) A standardized business Messaging Service that enables interoperable, secure and reliable exchange of messages between two parties. (7) A mechanism for configuration of the respective Messaging Services to engage in the agreed upon Business Process in accordance with the constraints defined in the business arrangement." From the background statement: "For over 25 years Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) has given companies the prospect of eliminating paper documents, reducing costs, and improving efficiency by exchanging business information in electronic form. Ideally, companies of all sizes could conduct eBusiness in a completely ad hoc fashion, without prior agreement of any kind. But this vision has not been realized with EDI; only large companies are able to afford to implement it, and much EDI-enabled eBusiness is centered around a dominant enterprise that imposes proprietary integration approaches on its trading partners. In the last few years, the Extensible Markup Language (XML) has rapidly become the first choice for defining data interchange formats in new eBusiness applications on the Internet. Many people have interpreted the XML groundswell as evidence that 'EDI is dead' -- made completely obsolete by the XML upstart -- but this view is naove from both business and technical standpoints. EDI implementations encode substantial experience in business processes, and companies with large investments in EDI integration will not abandon them without good reason. XML might enable more open, more loosely-coupled, and more object- or component-oriented systems than EDI. XML might enable more flexible and innovative eMarketplace business models than EDI. But the challenges of designing messages that meet business process requirements and standardizing their semantics are independent of the syntax in which the messages are encoded. The ebXML specifications provide a framework in which EDI's substantial investments in business processes can be preserved in an architecture that exploits XML's new technical capabilities." Review guidelines are provided on the ebXML web site; comments may be sent to the project team mailing list. [cache]

• [January 24, 2001] "XML Global to Host UN/CEFACT and OASIS ebXML Conference in February 2001." - "XML Global Technologies, Inc. (http://www.xmlglobal.com), a product focused, XML powered, e-business platform company, is pleased to announce that it will be hosting the upcoming ebXML conference scheduled to be held in Vancouver, BC on the 12th to 16th of February 2001. The conference, the first ebXML event to be held in Canada, will be co-hosted by DataChannel, NetFish Technologies and Cyclone Commerce. ebXML Vancouver (http://www.ebxmlvancouver.org) is a five-day conference focused on advancing ebXML as the accepted XML-based global infrastructure for electronic business. The conference is one of a series, the last one having been held in Tokyo in November 2000, with additional meetings scheduled for April and May of this year. The conference will attract CEOs, CTOs, software architects and developers from around the world, as well as members of the international press. XML Global has been an ardent supporter of ebXML since its inception in 1999 and is proud to have two of its management team as active members of the ebXML initiative. Duane Nickull, Founder and CTO of XML Global, is a member of the ebXML Steering Committee and co-editor, with Brian Eisenberg from DataChannel, of the Technical Architecture Specification. David Webber, Vice President of Business Development for XML Global, is involved with a wide variety of XML initiatives, including the ebXML interoperability standards project... ebXML (http://www.ebXML.org) is an international initiative established by UN/CEFACT and OASIS in late 1999 with a mandate to undertake an 18-month program of work to research and identify the technical basis upon which the global implementation of XML (Extensible Markup Language) can be standardized. The goal of ebXML is to facilitate open trade between organizations regardless of size by enabling XML to be used in a consistent manner to exchange electronic business data."

• [January 25, 2001] "ebXML Registry Services." By ebXML Registry Project Team. Working Draft 1/20/2001. Version 0.84. 55 pages. "This document defines the interface to the ebXML Registry Services as well as interaction protocols, message definitions and XML schema. A separate document, ebXML Registry Information Model [RIM], provides information on the types of metadata that is stored in the Registry as well as the relationships among the various metadata classes... The ebXML Registry provides a set of services that enable sharing of information between interested parties for the purpose of enabling business process integration between such parties based on the ebXML specifications. The shared information is maintained as objects in a repository and managed by the ebXML Registry Services defined in this document. The ebXML Registry architecture consists of an ebXML Registry and ebXML Registry clients. Clients communicate with the Registry using the ebXML Messaging Service in the same manner as any two ebXML applications communicating with each other. Future versions of this specification may extend the Registry architecture to support distributed Registries. This specification defines the interaction between a Registry client and the Registry. Although these interaction protocols are specific to the Registry, they are identical in nature to the interactions between two parties conducting B2B message communication using the ebXML Messaging Service as defined by [MS] and [CPA]. As such, these Registry specific interaction protocols are a special case of interactions between two parties using the ebXML Messaging Service. Appendix A supplies the Schemas and DTD Definitions (ebXMLError Message DTD, ebXML Registry DTD). Appendix B explains the UML class and sequence diagrams. UML diagrams are used as a way to concisely describe concepts. They are not intended to convey any specific implementation or methodology requirements. The term 'managed object content' is used to refer to actual Registry content (e.g. a DTD, as opposed to metadata about the DTD). The term 'ManagedObject' is used to refer to an object that provides metadata about a content instance (managed object content)... [cache]

• [January 25, 2001] "ebXML Registry Information Model." By ebXML Registry Project Team. Working Draft 1/19/2001. Version 0.55. 39 pages. "This document specifies the information model for the ebXML Registry. A separate document, ebXML Registry Services Specification [RS], describes how to build Registry Services that provide access to the information content in the ebXML Registry. The Registry provides a stable store where content submitted by a Submitting Organization is persisted. Such content is used to facilitate ebXML-based business to business (B2B) partnerships and transactions. Submitted content may be XML schema and documents, process descriptions, UML models, information about parties and even software components. A set of Registry Services that provide access to Registry content to clients of the Registry is defined in the ebXML Registry Services Specification [RS]. This document does not provide details on these services but may occasionally refer to them. The Registry Information Model provides a blueprint or high-level schema for the ebXML Registry. Its primary value is for implementers of ebXML Registries. It provides these implementers with information on the type of metadata that is stored in the Registry as well as the relationships among metadata classes. The Registry information model: (1) Defines what types of objects are stored in the Registry; (2) Defines how stored objects are organized in the Registry; (3) Is based on ebXML metamodels from various working groups. Implementers of the ebXML Registry may use the information model to determine which classes to include in their Registry implementation and what attributes and methods these classes may have. They may also use it to determine what sort of database schema their Registry implementation may need. The Registry Information Model may be implemented within an ebXML Registry in form of a relational database schema, object database schema or some other physical schema. It may also be implemented as interfaces and classes within a Registry implementation..." [cache]

• [January 25, 2001] "ebXML Registry [Proposed XML syntax]." Posted by Len Gallagher. 12-Jan-2001. "As requested by Scott Nieman, attached is a proposal for XML syntax that could be supported in Phase I of the ebXML Registry. It is based very closely on XML syntax specified in the OASIS Registry/Repository technical specification... This is a proposal to ebXML Regrep that it adopt an XML-based syntax to support simple requests to an ebXML Registry. Following the definitions of Focused Query, Totally Ad Hoc Query, Constrained Ad Hoc Query, and Content Based Query given in the proposed requirements document distributed by Farrukh Najmi earlier this week, this proposal is somewhere between a Focused Query and a Constrained Ad Hoc Query. This proposal is much more flexible than a Focused Query because it allows Boolean predicates on the visible attributes of each class specified in the ebXML Registry Information Model (RIM). We are assuming that ebXML Regrep can agree on a simple syntax for Boolean predicates over a pre-determined set of character string, integer, or date attributes! The proposal is much easier to implement than Constrained Ad Hoc Query because it does not require the implementation to parse an unfamiliar Query language. The proposed syntax is more like a script to be followed rather than a language that must be parsed. The script depends on the classes and relationships defined in the RIM, so even very simple syntax may result in quite powerful requests to the Registry. This is demonstrated in the Example section below, which shows how each of the example OQL queries in Farrukh's proposed requirements document can be expressed in this simple XML..." cache

• [May 12, 2000] "electronic business XML (ebXML) Requirements Specification." ebXML Candidate Draft. 28-April-2000. By Team Leader Mike Rawlins (Rawlins Consulting) and Editor Mark Crawford (Logistics Management Institute). "This ebXML Requirements Specification represents the work of the ebXML Requirements Project Team. It defines ebXML and the ebXML effort, articulates business requirements for ebXML, and defines specific requirements that will be addressed by the various ebXML project teams in preparing their deliverables."

• [May 15, 2000] "ebXML Registry and Repository Part 1: Business Domain." Working Draft Version: 1.0, May 11, 2000. Abstract: "This document is Part 1 of the Functional Requirement Specification for an ebXML-compliant registry and repository. Part 1 defines the scope of the workflow to interact with a registry and repository, the actors involved in these interactions and the overall Domain Architecture for the e-Business Requirements of the registry and the repository. The Domain Architecture provides the basis of the detailed workflow specifications as defined in ebXML Registry and Repository Part 2: e-Business Requirements as well as forming the basis of traceability between Part 1 and Part 2."

• ebXML Requirements Specification. 5 March, 2000. Also available in PDF, Word (.DOC), RTF, and text formats. [local archive copy]

• [December 12, 2000] "United Nations CEFACT and OASIS to Deliver ebXML Technical Infrastructure Ahead of Schedule. Proof-of-Concept Demo with Thirteen Vendors Proves Readiness of Electronic Business Infrastructure." - "The United Nations CEFACT and OASIS today announced that the core technical infrastructure of ebXML, the Electronic Business XML Initiative, nears completion and will be delivered in March 2001, two months ahead of schedule. The technical specifications for the transport, routing and packaging (TRP), trading partner agreements (TPA), and registry/repository (REG/REP) components of ebXML provide the required pieces to ensure interoperability based on XML standards for global business on the Internet. Enterprises are demanding a standards-based framework for global trading, and developers are demanding the availability of an open, business-quality architecture that they can begin evaluating and implementing now. Progress on the 18-month ebXML initiative has been so substantial, organizers agreed to move the delivery date forward to meet this demand. At a recent ebXML meeting in Tokyo, hundreds of organizations from Asia, Australia, Europe and North America gathered to advance the development of ebXML. As a highlight of this meeting and a ratification of this decision, sixteen companies collaborated in an interactive proof-of-concept demonstration of the ebXML technical infrastructure. 'The ebXML specifications for transport, routing and packaging, trading partner agreements and registry/repository are stable and ready for evaluation and early adoption. This is great news for Web developers who want to get a jumpstart on creating electronic commerce applications built on global standards,' said Klaus-Dieter Naujok, chair of ebXML and member of the UN/CEFACT Steering Group. 'We are very excited to report our progress is significantly ahead of schedule and that we are in a position to deliver the ebXML technical infrastructure in 90 days.' Cisco, Fujistu, IBM, Interwoven, IPNet, Netfish Technologies, NTT Communications, Savvion, Sterling Commerce, Sun Microsystems, TIE, Viquity and XMLSolutions collaborated to build an interactive implementation of ebXML interoperability. In addition, Extol, webMethods and XML Global tracked the POC event closely and indicated that they would be interested in participating in future ebXML events. The demonstration, which was presented in North America for the first time today at a media event in San Francisco, showed how businesses can use ebXML to dynamically formulate trading partnerships through a registry service and exchange electronic business transactions using a consistent XML-based messaging infrastructure. The ebXML demonstration showed dynamic business transactions using payloads from the Automotive Industry Action Group. 'These vendors, many of whom are competitors, came together to prove that one of ebXML core strength's is interoperability', said Robert S. Sutor, Ph.D. of IBM, vice chair of ebXML and member of the OASIS Board of Directors. 'Early completion of the ebXML technical infrastructure will pave the way for rapid availability of multiple commercial integrated ebXML-compliant solutions. These will reduce the costs of deployment and ensure the flexibility required for e-commerce success in the global market."

• [December 07, 2000] " Backers to Demo Electronic Business XML Specification." By Roberta Holland In eWEEK (December 07, 2000). "More than a dozen companies involved with the Electronic Business XML (ebXML) effort will gather next week to show a working demo of the specification. The so-called 'proof of concept' demonstration is slated to take place Tuesday in San Francisco. Vendors participating in the event and the drive for the new specification include IBM, Sun Microsystems Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Extol, Fujitsu, Interwoven, IPNet, Netfish Technologies Inc., Savvion, Sterling Commerce Inc., Viquity, XML Global and XMLSolutions Corp. The demonstration will show that ebXML works and is interoperable. Participants also are expected to announce that the delivery date has been accelerated from May, as originally planned, to as soon as March, sources said. The standards effort was created jointly by OASIS (the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) and the United Nations' branch in charge of e-business. The goal of the initiative is to create a standard framework for businesses to exchange data over the Internet, without having to go through the expense of Electronic Data Interchange. However, officials involved with the effort say companies that have already invested in EDI won't have to dump their existing system but can instead leverage ebXML on top of what they already have in place. 'The major significance of ebXML is that, really within the last year, [the effort] has managed to focus and direct the EDI community and really get them to accept that XML and Internet technologies are their future,' said Bob Sutor, IBM's director of e-business standards strategies, in Somers, N.Y. Sutor estimated companies will start coming out with products that support ebXML in the third quarter of next year. The effort has six general specifications, which are modular in nature and can be implemented piecemeal. They are: requirements, business processes, core components, transport routing and packaging, registry and repository, and trading partners. The group is furthest along with transport routing and packaging, which is the low-level messaging layer. Bill Smith, manager of Sun's XML technology center and member of the ebXML executive committee, agreed that being able to demonstrate running code is an important milestone. The effort will usher in 'the next generation for global trade,' said Smith, who also serves as president of OASIS."

• [September 30, 2000] "Final Messaging Services Specification Due From ebXML. SOAP to play no part in OASIS/UN standard, expected out November 6." By Douglas Finlay. In Software Development Times (October 01, 2000). "The ebXML initiative, a joint venture between the Organization for Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) and the United Nations' CEFACT (UN/CEFACT) body, is set to finalize and release the Messaging Services Specification at its next meeting in Tokyo November 6, 2000. It is the first specification from ebXML's Transport, Routing and Packaging (TRP) group and is intended to standardize how messages are wrapped and sent from business to business in an open environment across the Internet. The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) architecture, in which Microsoft has played a leading role and which had been under consideration as a possible transport mechanism for the messages by the TRP group, was rejected as being too closed an architecture for the stated open and collaborative direction of the ebXML initiative (www.ebxml.org). Instead, the ebXML initiative chose MIME-XML technology to wrap and send the message. 'The goal of the ebXML initiative is to facilitate global trade between organizations of any size through a set of XML-based standards defined through an open and collaborative process,' remarked Ed Julson, business development manager for Sun Microsystems Inc.'s XML technologies and a working member of the group. Julson said the ebXML initiative, begun in December 1999 to help companies exchange data over the Internet in a public way at lower cost, would release a number of specifications over an 18-month time frame, and that all of the specifications are entirely platform- and language-independent. Areas in which specifications are currently being worked on include business processes; registry and repository; core components; and trading partners. Two prototypes of the ebXML specification have already been built, and both were spawned from prior ebXML proof-of-concept meetings in Brussels, Belgium, and San Jose, Calif. While Microsoft threw its hat into the open-source ring by submitting its SOAP specification to the ebXML committee for use as a transport mechanism for delivering the messages, Drummond said the TRP working group found that MIME-XML was best suited for the job. Fujitsu and Sun are solidly behind the ebXML initiative and have plans to implement any ebXML specifications as quickly as they become available. Jim Hughes, Fujitsu's director of industry relations, said the company was actively combining its popular reliable messaging technology for its mainframes into a prototype of the messaging spec to get the implementation into its products."

• [November 08, 2000] "Understanding ebXML, UDDI and XML/edi." By David Webber and Anthony Dutton. From XML.org. November 06, 2000. "The past six months have seen an extensive and accelerating amount of work on providing practical implementations and technical specifications to enable the development of open interoperable eBusiness interactions. This work is focused around utilizing the W3C XML syntax and the Internet as the underpinning technologies. In this context, the focus of the ebXML initiative is to develop a single global electronic market based on an open public XML-based infrastructure enabling the global use of electronic business information in an interoperable, secure and consistent manner by all parties. A primary objective of ebXML is to lower the barrier of entry to electronic business in order to facilitate trade, particularly with respect to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME's) and developing nations. The ebXML initiative is sponsored by UN/CEFACT and OASIS and is an open public initiative with now over one thousand participants. The Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) initiative by contrast was started by IBM, Ariba and Microsoft about five months ago as a means to create an implementation of their technologies that deliver the underpinning for the interoperation of netmarket places and integrating business services using the Internet. UDDI is based around the concept of standard registry services that provide Yellow, White and Green Page business functionality. The UDDI focus is on providing large organizations the means to reach out to and manage their network of smaller business customers. The biggest issues facing UDDI are ones of acceptance and buy-in from businesses themselves, and implementation issues of scalability and physical implementation. By contrast the XML/edi Initiative was start three years ago as a grass-roots initiative to promote the use of XML for eBusiness. The XML/edi Vision includes the concept of the Fusion-of-Five: XML, EDI, Repositories, Templates and Agents to create next generation eBusiness. The ebXML and UDDI work represent embodiments of the XML/edi vision and as such we need to understand how far this work has come, and how much further is needed to fully deliver on the promise of XML and eBusiness... Within the software industry itself countries such as India and the Eastern European countries are already making significant in-roads into this domination as the labour pool for cost-effective development resources are stretched to the limit worldwide. Consequently over the next five years we can foresee that the industry is moving to an open global economy where new and profoundly different metrics will emerge. The measure of ebXML, UDDI and XML/edi will be how well they are able to provide and satisfy these needs."

• [September 11, 2000] "Global Manufacturers and Retailers Adopt ebXML. 850,000 Companies Select ebXML for New Global Commerce Internet Protocol." - "Members of the Global Commerce Initiative (GCI) announced plans to use ebXML as the backbone of their new data exchange standard for business-to-business trade in the consumer goods industry. ebXML, an initiative of the United Nations CEFACT and OASIS, will provide the technical infrastructure for the Global Commerce Internet Protocol, a set of recommendations governing the management of data for Internet communication and other B2B interactions. GCI members include 40 major manufacturers and retailers as well as eight trade associations, which in total represent 850,000 companies around the world. Exchanges such as Transora, the WorldWide Retail Exchange, GlobalNetXchange, and CPGmarket.com are taking active roles in the GCI development. 'It is clear to us that ebXML will soon become the standard for all global trade,' said Peter Jordan, director of European systems for Kraft Foods and member of the GCI Board of Directors. 'By implementing ebXML as part of our infrastructure, GCI takes advantage of the excellent development work that's being accomplished to streamline many EDI processes and remove waste and redundancy from supply chains.' EAN and the UCC have made a major contribution to GCI's effort to quickly standardize Internet trading in the consumer products industry with the first in a series of electronic commerce standards. In order to support the GCI Internet Protocol, the UCC and EAN undertook an ambitious effort to provide GCI with a series of electronic commerce standards for the following processes: Item Synchronization, Party, Simple Purchase Order and Dispatch (Advance Ship Notice). This project encompassed the creation of business models, global data dictionaries, and XML schemas. GCI proof-of-concept trials are underway and the organization plans to demonstrate its protocol at the upcoming ebXML meeting in Tokyo, November 6, 2000. . . Founded in October 1999, the Global Commerce Initiative is the result of joint industry efforts in North and South America, Europe and Asia where, since the early-nineties, strategic collaborations have been developing between stakeholders of all sizes across the complex supply chain for consumer goods. Made possible by some of the world's best-known companies, they include the Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) movements in Europe, North and South America and Asia, together with the Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Standards Association (VICS) in North America, EAN International and UCC, CIES, The Food Business Forum, FMI, AIM, the European Brands Association, and GMA."

• [September 05, 2000] "ebXML Sets Standard for Electronic Trading Partner Agreements." - "ebXML, a joint initiative of the United Nations/CEFACT and OASIS, announced plans to standardize electronic contracts and trading partnerships using XML. The newly formed ebXML Trading-Partners Project Team will develop a specification to define the technical parameters of trading partner profiles and agreements (TPA). The Trading-Partners team will complement other ebXML> project teams working to develop an open XML-based infrastructure that will enable business information to be exchanged consistently on a global basis. 'Standardizing on a specification for the electronic trading partner agreement is essential to widespread e-commerce,' said Klaus-Dieter Naujok of NextERA Interactive, chair of ebXML and member of the UN/CEFACT Steering Committee. 'TPAs capture critical information upon which organizations must agree in order for their applications and business processes to communicate. TPA will be a key element for interoperability among B2B server implementations.' Martin W. Sachs of IBM, leader of the ebXML Trading-Partners Project Team, defines an electronic TPA as an XML document that records specific technology parameters for conducting electronic business. Partner identification, communications protocol, security for message exchanges (including encryption, authentication, and non-repudiation), definition of requests and responses are all part of a typical TPA. Much of the new project team's initial focus will be based on previously proposed OASIS technical work surrounding tpaML (the Trading Partners Agreement Markup Language). tpaML was originally developed by IBM. The Electronic Business XML Initiative is a worldwide project to standardize the exchange of electronic business data. Sponsored by the UN/CEFACT and OASIS, ebXML will lower the barrier-of-entry to electronic business and facilitate trade, particularly for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and developing nations. ebXML is supported by hundreds of industry consortia, standards bodies and companies from around the world." [Announcement made available in .DOC format.]

• [August 22, 2000] "ebXML: Assembling the Rubik's Cube." By Alan Kotok. From XML.com. (August 16, 2000). ['The fourth meeting of the Electronic Business XML intiative sees the project make good progress. However, much remains to be achieved in order to hit ebXML's self-imposed 18-month deadline.'] "The fourth meeting of the Electronic Business XML (ebXML) initiative, 7-11 August 2000 in San Jose, California, saw the project consolidate some of its early progress, add new functionality, show off more of its messaging capabilities, and attract an important new industry partner to its cause. But despite the progress, participants at this latest meeting were bogged down fitting important pieces of its technology together to complete this comprehensive specification on time. The ebXML initiative, started last November, is creating a global framework for the exchange of business data using XML across industries and among businesses of all sizes. And while at first glance it may look like another business framework using XML, ebXML hopes to combine the experience from 20 years of EDI with XML's capabilities to fix EDI's shortcomings, which has prevented all but the world's largest businesses from enjoying the productivity benefits and process improvements of exchanging data electronically. The ebXML architecture combines message format specifications with business process models, a set of syntax-neutral core components, and distributed repositories with which businesses will interact. In their earlier meetings, ebXML's project teams wrote the requirements and outlined the various parts of the architecture. In this meeting, the development teams continued defining the individual specifications, but also started to reconcile these various parts..."

• [May 12, 2000] "ebXML Uses OpenTravel Alliance Specification for Early Tests." - "In its first plenary session, the electronic business XML or ebXML initiative announced two of its project teams will test early deliverables with content based on the OpenTravel Alliance specification. The ebXML initiative is developing the first common global e-business message structure and syntax based on the Extensible Markup Language or XML, and is holding its second working meeting this week in Brussels. An ebXML project team focusing on transport, routing, and packaging will develop a prototype using sample messages based on version 1 of the OpenTravel Alliance (OTA) specification. This specification, released for public comment in February 2000, provides a common customer profile for travel suppliers, intermediaries, and customers. The sample ebXML messages will test early versions of the initiative's message structure, as well as common addressing and security data. The test messages will generate and update sample customer profiles created by a travel agency and stored by an airline and car rental company. Another ebXML project team focusing on core components will test concepts for a system to generate sample data items common across business domains. This group will test items from the travel, tourism, and leisure industries using the OTA specification as a source. This ebXML team will test items from manufacturing and the international supply chain as well. The ebXML mission is to provide an open XML-based infrastructure enabling the global use of electronic business information in an interoperable, secure and consistent manner by all parties. Five individuals from OTA member companies are taking part in the May 2000 ebXML meetings, representing both their respective organizations and the Alliance. In addition, the Data Interchange Standards Association, that provides technical and administrative management for OTA, has two staff members participating in the current meetings. OTA, which began in May 1999, has over 120 members representing influential names in all sectors of the travel industry, including air, car rental, hotel, travel agencies, technology providers and related suppliers. The Alliance is comprised of five working groups air, car, hotel, leisure supplier, and non-supplier together, with an interoperability committee to coordinate their efforts. OTA defined its open messages with XML, the new high-powered language that makes it possible to exchange business data seamlessly among different systems, companies, and industries over the World Wide Web. The OTA will hold its annual OTA Advisory Forum on May 17, 2000 in Tempe, AZ."

• [March 21, 2000] "ebXML Initiative to Deliver Its Initial XML Interoperability Specifications in May 2000." - The ebXML Initiative [designed] to create a single global XML framework solution -- a joint effort of the United Nation/CEFACT and OASIS -- continued to attract the participation of major industry standards organizations and companies from around the world at its second working meeting in Orlando, FL, USA. 'ebXML may very well prove to be a major event of the new millennium, revolutionizing how business transactions are tracked, affecting worldwide impacts, removing paper from the process, and by empowering people to create whole new work models,' said David RR Webber, North American Chair of the XML/EDI Group. Others expressed the belief that the ebXML Initiative is the only chance this decade to establish an international electronic commerce standard. Participants representing 14 countries, 83 companies, government agencies and several national and international standards organizations extended to nearly 500 by virtual participation. Lending their knowledge and expertise to the ebXML Initiative are representatives from IBM, Sun Microsystems, Commerce One, Dun & Bradstreet, Oracle, Visa International, General Motors joined with individuals representing Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and United Kingdom. A full listing of countries, companies and organizations represented is at the end of this document. The energy and enthusiasm of the on-site participants was evident in all eight Project Teams' efforts. Each project team committed to an aggressive schedule to deliver the components of the ebXML(TM) framework. Specification components of the ebXML Framework to be developed between the Orlando meeting and submitted for approval at the next meeting to be held in Brussels include the following: (1) ebXML Requirements Specification; (2) ebXML Conceptual Architecture Specification; (3) ebXML Message Structure and Headers Specification; (4) ebXML Core Components Specification. The work of the ebXML project teams is carried out via extensive listserv discussions and regular teleconferences between each face-to-face meeting. Proposed specifications will be submitted for public comment via the ebXML listserv and the ebXML web site. Participation is open to anyone wishing to contribute to this critical and exciting initiative. Interested organizations and individuals can learn more about the effort, including details on how to get involved, by visiting the ebXML Initiative web site at http://www.ebxml.org. The next meeting is scheduled for 8-12 May 2000, in Brussels, Belgium. Subsequent meetings are scheduled for 7-11 August in the United States and 6-11 November in Tokyo, Japan. Details for the Brussels meeting are now available at the ebXML web site."

• [May 12, 2000] "The Problem of Business Semantics." By Jon Bosak. Slide Presentation (April 14, 2000). Stanford KNOWS seminar focused on Ontologies, E-Commerce, XML, and Metadata (CS 545), hosyed by the InfoLab (Spring 2000 Seminar Organized by Gio Wiederhold and Stefan Decker). Abstract: "For thousands of years, commercial transactions have consisted of two things: an exchange of goods and services, and an exchange of documents. XML is achieving wide acceptance because it allows us to implement the exchange of documents electronically. Originally designed as a more capable replacement for HTML, XML is becoming the technology of choice for a style of spontaneous trade in which previously unacquainted buyers and sellers meet and do business in a virtual marketplace. But trade -- especially international trade -- works only if we have common vocabularies and forms for the conduct of business. XML solves this problem on one level by providing a mechanism for the creation of an unlimited number of these vocabularies and forms, each designed for a different purpose. But clearing away the syntactic underbrush merely exposes the real problem: How do we arrive at shared systems of meaning across industries and cultures? This talk describes attempts to grapple with this question now taking place in ebXML, a joint initiative of two organizations -- the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) and the United Nations body for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) -- dedicated to the development of an XML-based infrastructure for electronic commerce."

• [March 15, 2000] A recent announcement from the Electronic Business XML Initiative: "The first ebXML Initiative Technical Specifications has been released for public comment. The ebXML Requirements Specification is available for download from the ebXML web site. This ebXML Requirements Specification represents the work of the ebXML Requirements Project Team. It defines ebXML and the ebXML effort, articulates overall business requirements for ebXML, and defines specific technical infrastructure requirements that will be addressed by the various ebXML Project Teams in preparing their deliverables. The document includes general guiding principles for the development of other ebXML Technical Specifications. Major requirements identified in the specification include: (1) general Business Requirements which relate to the need for a single consistent approach to use XML; (2) the need to support both vertical and horizontal solutions regardless of the user's level of sophistication; (3) the need to support a range of basic, low cost solutions for Small or Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as well as complex solutions appropriate to large enterprises; (4) a general specification for developing XML-based schematas; (5) the need for globalized solutions that will accommodate national and international process requirements; (6) completely open accessibility, enabled by a registry and repository; (7) the need for an architecture that will ensure and maximize interoperability by supporting common business process, common semantics, a common vocabulary and common character encoding; (8) consistent transport, routing and packaging methodologies to ensure secure sending and receiving of messages over the Internet; and (9) digital signature and other security related capabilities. The specification is available for the full ebXML Work Group and all interested parties in the general public. Comments should be emailed as plain text in the body of the mail message or as an attachment to Mike Rawlins, ebXML Requirements Project Team Leader at rawlins@metronet.com or Mark Crawford, ebXML Requirements Project Team Editor at mcrawfor@mail.lmi.org. The review period closes 27 March 2000. The specification will undergo a second cycle of revision and review prior to the expected final approval at the May ebXML meeting in Brussels. The ebXML vision is to create a single global XML framework solution. It is a joint effort of the United Nation/CEFACT organization and OASIS. Participants represent 14 countries, 83 companies, government agencies and several national and international standards organizations. More than 500 people around the world participate via Internet mailing lists. Following the public comment period, the final Requirements Specifications will be approved by the full ebXML Plenary during its meeting in Brussels 8-12 May 2000. Full details about the ebXML Initiative, its project teams and meetings is at www.ebxml.org. Technical Specifications will be available for download from the ebXML web site as they are released."

• [January 15, 2000] "ebXML Registry and Repository Temporary Web Site." "This repository work effort is a joint work effort between UN/CEFACT and OASIS. UN/CEFACT has been focusing its repository work efforts to support the software development life cycle, specifically to support Unified Modeling Language and the Unified Process. OASIS work effort is focused on a DTD and XML Schema repository supporting industry specific vocabularies and data element reuse. It is very feasible that both goals can be achieved using the same specifications. In November [1999], the project team was formed at the first ebXML meeting. This site serves as the informational site for the project team as well as other interested in the work effort."

• [November 18, 1999] "TMWG Recommendations On XML." Techniques and Methodologies Working Group (TMWG). UN/CEFACT/TMWG/N089/Rev.5 (12 pages). 10-September-1999. "On behalf of UN/CEFACT's, TMWG has monitored closely the development of XML, the eXtensible Markup Language, and recognizes fully its potential to play a major role in facilitating all Web based business transactions. TMWG especially recognizes the opportunities that XML offers to small and medium sized companies, to developing countries and to economies in transition. It enables them to enter easily into the world of electronic business and, as a consequence, could bring very significant additional growth to world trade. XML has rapidly become the standard for defining data interchange formats in Internet applications. XML was developed by the World Wide Web Consortium to bring the power of SGML to the Web in a simplified form to overcome HTML's inherent limitations. XML makes it possible to encode information with meaningful structure and semantics in a very accessible notation that is both human-readable and readily processable by computers. Many forward-looking individuals and companies have started to work together to develop XML-based specifications for the information they most often need to exchange in a particular industry or domain. However, there is considerable redundancy to these specifications, because some of the information models they specify are common to multiple industries or marketplaces. Some concepts and constructs needed in these 'vertical' specifications apply to all business domains, but each new specification seems to 'start from scratch' and reinvent them. The overlapping scope and lack of standard content models and semantics clearly impedes interoperability. In principle, translating UN/EDIFACT directories into XML data elements seems like a way to provide a set of standard data elements that could be used by all XML vertical applications, thereby facilitating interoperability. However, there is as yet little agreement about the best method for encoding UN/EDIFACT data elements in XML. Recasting UN/EDIFACT semantics into Unified Modeling language (UML) Models first, while adding the missing process documentation into the models, would produce unambiguous XML vocabularies generated from the UML models..."

• [November 18, 1999] "Recommendations For ebXML Kick-Off Meeting." Techniques and Methodologies Working Group (TMWG). UN/CEFACT/TMWG/N104, 12-NOVEMBER-1999. "The UN/CEFACT Techniques and Methodologies Working Group met during the week of November 8-12, 1999 in Concord, CA. The XML Project Team met to continue its discussions on interoperability, and formulated recommendations for first ebXML meeting. The XML Project Team felt strongly that the first ebXML must have tangible outcomes. At minimum the team concluded that if project teams were formed, and deliverables were agreed upon, the first ebXML meeting would be a success. This document serves as a contribution from UN/CEFACT/TMWG to the first meeting of ebXML. It defines a proposal to structure ebXML into six project teams: (1) Messaging and Packaging; (2) Semantics and Message Architecture; (3) Semantic Foundation; (4) Registry and Repository; (5) Technical Support; (6) Marketing and Awareness. Attached is a matrix that addresses the main key issues that TMWG sees as essential that these project teams cover. We would like the ebXML attendees to review this document for consideration in the formation of project teams. With these working groups, the XML Project Team feels confident that interoperability of application to application data interchanges can be achieved..."

• [December 01, 1999] "Organizations from Around the World Gather to Launch ebXML Global Electronic Business Initiative." - "The Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML), a joint effort of the United Nation/CEFACT and OASIS, attracted the participation of major industry standards organizations and companies from around the world at its inaugural meeting in San Jose, CA, USA. ebXML is an open, vendor-neutral initiative to establish a global technical and semantic framework that will enable XML to be used in a consistent manner for the exchange of electronic business data. More than 120 representatives from organizations as varied as ACORD, Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12, Commerce One, DataChannel, DISA, UN/EDIFACT, IBM, OAG, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Inc. and others joined together to launch the ebXML initiative. Project teams were identified at the inaugural meeting and began work on the following: ebXML Requirements, Business Process Methodology, Technical Architecture, Core Components, Transport/Routing and Packaging, Registry and Repository, Technical Coordination & Support, Marketing, Awareness & Education. ebXML project teams will teleconference until the next face-to-face meeting, scheduled for 31 January - 4 February 2000, in Orlando, Florida. Subsequent meetings are scheduled for 8 - 12 May in Brussels, Belgium, 7-11 August in the United States and 6-11 November in Tokyo, Japan.

• [December 07, 1999] "XML Drumbeat Intensifies." By Michael Lattig In InfoWorld (December 06, 1999). "Extensible Markup Language's (XML) march to the forefront of IT infrastructures took a big step last week as more than 150 companies, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), and the United Nations' Center for Trade Facilitation and E-business (UN/CEFACT) kicked off a crusade for a global, cross-industry framework for electronic business. At the same time, the number of options for companies looking to get a jump on using XML for business-to-business application integration continued to swell. The goal of the global XML initiative, said Bob Sutor, a member of the board of directors at OASIS, in Billerica, Mass., is to tap into the vast technical and business experience of individuals from a number of industries and use that expertise to develop a universal framework for XML, to be called ebXML. 'With all the [XML] excitement, people are going off in small pockets to do their own thing,' said Sutor, who is also vice chairman of the ebXML project. 'Primarily what we're trying to get done is interoperability, trying to build an overall framework that anyone can plug into.' The ebXML group, which met officially for the first time last week, has outlined an aggressive strategy and hopes to have its initial offering within the next six months. That would put the group on target for delivering a final ebXML framework in 15 to 18 months. The goal of the project is to develop a cross-industry XML standard for e-business and encourage the continued development of vertical XML standards, not to pre-empt industry-specific XML standards, according to Sutor. UN/CEFACT has, however, requested a moratorium on XML development among its member groups to allow the ebXML initiative to take lead as the lone standard for cross-industry XML, according to Klaus-Dieter Naujok, chairman of ebXML and a representative of UN/CEFACT."

• [December 01, 1999] "Global XML framework for e-business planned." By Michael Lattig. In InfoWorld (November 30, 1999). "The crusade for a global, cross-industry Extensible Markup Language (XML) framework for electronic business is officially under way, with backing from over 150 companies, as well as the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), and the United Nations' Center for Trade Facilitation and E-business (UN/CEFACT). The goal, according to Bob Sutor, a member of the board of directors at XML standards body OASIS, is to tap into the vast technical and business experience of individuals across a number of industries and use that expertise to develop a universal framework for XML, to be called ebXML. To accomplish that goal, participating companies have been split into eight project teams based on their respective areas of expertise, and those teams will be working over the next six months to develop the first framework for the ebXML framework. Those project teams will cover marketing awareness and education; technical requirements; business process methodology; technical architecture; core components; transportation, routing, and packaging; registry and repository; and technical coordination and support. While the goal of the project is to develop a cross-industry XML standard for e-business, it is not designed to preempt the development of industry-specific XML standards. On the contrary, said Sutor, OASIS and the UN/CEFACT will encourage the continued development of vertical XML standards."

• [December 02, 1999] "DataChannel Participates with United Nations and OASIS to Support ebXML Global Business Initiative." - "DataChannel, Inc. a leading developer of XML-based Enterprise Information Portal (EIP) solutions today announced its support of the Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML), a joint effort of the United Nations CEFACT and OASIS. ebXML is an open, vendor-neutral initiative to establish a global technical and semantic framework that will enable XML to be utilized in a consistent manner for the exchange of all electronic business data. DataChannel is one of more than 50 organizations participating in the ebXML initiative. 'We are very pleased that DataChannel has joined this effort,' said Robert S. Sutor, chief strategy officer of OASIS and Vice-Chair of the ebXML Initiative. 'DataChannel is an active sponsor of the OASIS XML.org industry portal. We look forward to their contributions to the development of these important open XML standards for global e-business.' The first ebXML meeting was held November 17 - 19 in San Jose, California, and was attended by over 120 participants representing more than 50 companies, consortiums, and international standards bodies. ebXML.org is an international initiative established by UN/CEFACT and OASIS with a mandate to undertake a 15-18 month program of work to research and identify the technical basis upon which the global implementation of XML (Extensible Markup Language) can be standardized. The goal is to provide an open technical framework to enable XML to be utilized in a consistent and uniform manner for the exchange of electronic business data in application-to-application, application-to-person and person-to-application environments."

• Trade Facilitation Code Lists

• Codes for Units of Measure Used in International Trade

• Codes by name

• Codes by common code

• Contact: Klaus-Dieter Naujok [WWW (Harbinger Corporation) - Chair UN/CEFACT/TMWG (Techniques and Methodologies Working Group)

• Contact: Dr. Robert S. Sutor (IBM, and Chief Strategy Officer of OASIS).

• [September 15, 1999] "United Nations and OASIS Join Forces to Produce Global XML Framework." - "The United Nations body for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) have joined forces to initiate a worldwide project to standardize XML business specifications. UN/CEFACT and OASIS have established the Electronic Business XML Initiative to develop a technical framework that will enable XML to be utilized in a consistent manner for the exchange of all electronic business data. Industry groups currently working on XML specifications have been invited to participate in the 18-month project. The results of the Electronic Business XML Initiative will be placed in the public domain on XML.org. The Electronic Business XML Initiative will be led by Klaus-Dieter Naujok of the Harbinger Corporation, a senior member of the UN/CEFACT Steering Committee, and Dr. Robert S. Sutor of IBM, the Chief Strategy Officer of OASIS." For other references, see the main entry "Electronic Business XML Initiative." [cf. alt URL]

• [October 18, 1999] "ASC X12 Publishes Technical Report Representing X12 Semantics in XML Format Rising interest in XML initiatives prompts X12 to form XML group and endorse ebXML project." - "The Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12 embarked on an array of initiatives to express X12 semantics in eXtensible markup language (XML) syntax. At the recent ASC X12 meeting in Orlando, FL, October 3-8, 1999, X12's Communications and Controls Subcommittee approved for publication a technical report designed to provide an experimental representation of X12 semantics in XML syntax. In an equally substantive move, X12 formed a steering committee task group charged with drafting policies and procedures that relate to X12 and XML, serving as a liaison to other XML groups and creating common approaches for XML/electronic data interchange (EDI) development within X12. Additionally, ASC X12 members endorsed the efforts of the ebXML work group, formed by the United Nations Centre for the Facilitation of Procedures and Practices for Administration, Commerce and Transport (UN/CEFACT) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). As a contribution to ebXML endeavors, X12 Committee representatives submitted the technical report on XML and X12 to the newly formed ebXML work group. Several X12 members plan to participate in ebXML efforts to define the technical basis for standardizing the global implementation of XML." See the main entry: "DISA, ANSI ASC X12/XML."

• [September 21, 1999] "Harbinger Director Chosen to Lead Joint UN/CEFACT and OASIS Initiative On Forming Standard XML Business Specifications." - "Harbinger Corporation, a worldwide supplier of Electronic Commerce software, services and solutions, announced today that its Director of Messaging and Technology, Klaus-Dieter Naujok, had been selected by the United Nations body for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) to chair a working group developing the framework that will standardize eXtensible Markup Language (XML) business specifications. For more information on this initiative, go to www.unece.org/trade/untdid/sessdocs/xml.htm. Naujok is currently the UN/CEFACT Standards Liaison Rapporteur. He has been involved in Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Commerce for 12 years and, in that time, he has served as chair of the Pan American EDIFACT Board (PAEB) and chair of the PAEB Technical Assessment. In addition, he is a member of the UN/CEFACT and ASC X12 Steering committees. At Harbinger, Naujok is Director of software development for the company's messaging security software product Harbinger Templar. He is also responsible for the Standards & Technology Group at Harbinger, providing the most accurate and timely information throughout the company, and out to E-Commerce professionals via the company's portal, harbinger.net. 'To be effective for global business, it is vital that XML specifications are based on a common framework,' said Ray Walker, Chairman of the UN/CEFACT steering group. ``Today, that does not exist, consequently, there are many - often competing - efforts underway worldwide to develop such specifications.... We are delighted that Klaus-Dieter Naujok will lead this group and are excited about the potential for worldwide harmonization.' [And] 'Harbinger strongly supports the UN/CEFACT initiative and is proud to have Naujok leading their efforts,' said Les Wyatt, Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing and Management for Harbinger. 'XML holds strategic importance for our product development group. We are actively supporting and implementing a number of programs for XML, and driving industry leaders together to agree on a set of principles and standards for incorporating XML technologies in Internet Electronic Commerce.' UN/CEFACT is the United Nations body whose mandate covers worldwide policy and technical development in the area of trade facilitation and electronic business. Headquartered in Geneva, it has developed and promoted many tools for the facilitation of global business processes, including UN/EDIFACT, the international EDI standard. Its current work program includes such topics as Simpl-EDI and Object-oriented EDI, and it strongly supports the development and implementation of open inter-operable, global standards and specifications for electronic business." See the earlier announcement "United Nations and OASIS Join Forces to Produce Global XML Framework" and the main entry "Electronic Business XML Initiative." [local archive copy]

• Harbinger Home Page

• UN/CEFACT XML Reports: 17-September-1998.

• Harbinger XML White Paper - "This white paper is part of a series of E-Commerce resources from Harbinger on emerging E-Commerce trends and technologies. In addition to providing an introduction to eXtensible Markup Language (XML) as an emerging technology, this paper also outlines major XML-based standards, areas of deployment, solution scenarios and Harbinger's plans for adopting XML to enable Internet-centric E-Commerce solutions." [local archive copy]

• "Harbinger, IBM Announce Worldwide Marketing Agreement for E-Commerce Products and Services." - "Harbinger Corporation, a worldwide supplier of business-to-business Electronic Commerce software, services and solutions, and IBM today announced a worldwide agreement. Under the contract, IBM will market and support E-Commerce end-user software products developed by Harbinger for translation and mapping." [1999-09-13]

• ebXML Marketing
• ebXML JMT Committee Activties

• ebXML approved specifications

• ebXML Invitation Letter, [local archive copy]

• ebXML Terms of Reference, [local archive copy]

• ebXML Day at XML DevCon 2001 - New York City, April 9, 2001

• UN/CEFACT Home Page

• ebXML documents from UN/CEFACT

• UN/EDIFACT