UBL TC Charter
The following charter for the OASIS Universal Business Language
Technical Committee is taken from the proposal to create the TC submitted to
OASIS 28 August 2001.
Aims
The aims of the UBL Technical Committee are as follows:
- To avert a crisis in electronic business caused by competing XML
business-to-business document standards by choosing as a starting point an
existing XML business document library as the basis for creating a new
"Universal Business Language" that will be a synthesis of existing XML business
document libraries.
- To 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.
- 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.
- To 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.
- To vest ownership of UBL in OASIS, a nonprofit corporation dedicated
to the adoption of structured information standards, and to make it freely
available to everyone without licensing or other fees.
- Ultimately, to promote UBL to the status of an international standard
for the conduct of XML-based electronic business.
Deliverables
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.
As currently envisioned, the UBL work will take place in two phases:
- A first phase to align the vocabulary and structures of UBL with the
work of the Joint Core Components initiative and with the vocabulary and
structures of other already existing business libraries such as RosettaNet and
OAGIS.
- A second phase to implement a mechanism for the generation of
context-specific schemas for basic business documents and their components
through the application of transformation rules to a common XML source
library.
If the work actually does take place in this form, then it is estimated
that the first phase will take roughly a year to complete and that the second
phase will take roughly another year. If the two phases can be combined or run
in parallel, then it is estimated that delivery of an initial set of
specifications will take one to two years.