The Open Applications Group (OAGI) has announced the public review phase for the Open Applications Group Integration Specification (OAGIS) Version 8.1-Beta-1, supporting additional interoperability points between business applications. Additional Logistics capabilities include ShipUnit, CarrierRoute, and the extension of Shipment to new processes. Version 8.1 incorporates refinements of the modeling of the business messages to identify common pieces. It makes full use of the ebXML CoreComponent Specifications and includes full support for the UN Core Components Technical Specification (CCTS) version 1.90. On-line shopping capabilities have been added to the Cart family of BODs; new Financial Settlement model added to the Payment family of BODs allows organizations to make electronic payment of goods and/or services. The Beta distribution contains some 3953 files, including 430 BODs and 545 XML schema files. The Open Applications Group is a "non-profit consortium focusing on best practices and processes based on XML content for eBusiness and Application Integration." The principal notion in OAGIS is the BOD (Business Object Document), supporting a common horizontal message architecture. BODs are "the business messages or business documents that are exchanged between software applications or components; between companies; across supply chains; and between supply chains." The 30 day review period for OAGIS 8.1 is February 3, 2003 through March 14, 2003.

OAGIS 8.1 Beta New Features

"This release includes the following new content:

• Financial Settlment capabilities
• Online shopping Cart
• Additional CRM capabilities
• Add Logistics capabilities
• Support for Credit Card and EFT processing

New technical content includes:

• Support for ebXML CoreComponents 1.90 document
• Additional moduling of the OAGIS BODs in order to identify the primary domain of the components in which they are crafted
• This beta also includes a sample of the WSDL and SOAP support files that show example

From posting of Michael Rowell (Open Applications Group, Chief Architect)

OAGIS 8.1-Beta Distribution

"Please note that this is a Beta release of OAGIS 8.1 as such it is subject to change. In order to ensure the quality of the specification OAGIS uses a thirty business day review period. The OAGIS 8.1-Beta release enters this review period today February 3 the period will run throught the close of business on March 14, 2003. Please provide all feedback via the feedback form provided on the OAGI website. Before downloading take a moment to look at the instructions for installing OAGIS 8.0. These apply for OAGIS 8.1-Beta as well... This version of OAGIS makes use of the several 'core' XML Technologies including XML Schema, XPath and XSL. Also, all of the documentation is provided in HTML format so that you can view everything through your browser. Once you have downloaded the ZIP file, unzip the entire contents into a single directory. You can then view the documentation in your browser by clicking on the index.html file in the OAGIS/8.1-Beta-1 directory."

About OAGI

"The Open Applications Group is a non-profit consortium focusing on best practices and process based XML content for eBusiness and Application Integration. It is the largest publisher of XML based content for business software interoperability in the world. Open Applications Group, Inc. members have over 6 years of extensive experience in building this industry consensus based framework for business software application interoperability and have developed a repeatable process for quickly developing high quality business content and XML representations of that content. The mission of the Open Applications Group is to define and encourage the adoption of a unifying standard for eBusiness and Application Software interoperability that reduces customer cost and time to deploy solutions..." [from the website Introduction]