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Subject: Revised UBL TC FAQ
Hello UBL TC,
We need to revise the FAQ linked from the UBL TC web page, which
is now pathetically out of date, in time for the announcement of
UBL 1.0 as an OASIS Standard this coming Monday. I've prepared
the draft below based partly on the old language and partly on
more recent descriptions of the activity. Please let me know if
anything needs to be added or changed before I send this in to
OASIS Friday evening.
Jon
==================================================================
Q: What is UBL?
A: UBL, the Universal Business Language, is the product of an
international effort to define a royalty-free library of
standard electronic XML business documents such as purchase
orders and invoices. Developed in an open and accountable OASIS
Technical Committee with participation from a variety of
industry data standards organizations, UBL is designed to plug
directly into existing business, legal, auditing, and records
management practices, eliminating the re-keying of data in
existing fax- and paper-based supply chains and providing an
entry point into electronic commerce for small and medium-sized
businesses.
Q: Where did UBL come from?
A: The UBL initiative originated in efforts beginning in mid-1999
to create a set of standard XML "office documents" within
OASIS. The work of the OASIS OfficeDoc TC under the leadership
of Murray Altheim of Sun Microsystems was set aside when OASIS
and UN/CEFACT began collaboration on ebXML in December
1999. Interest in the creation of a standard XML syntax for
basic commercial documents revived again in May 2000 with the
decision in ebXML to omit a standard XML "payload" syntax from
the initial set of ebXML deliverables. The working group that
came to be known as UBL began in April 2001 as a discussion
group sponsored by CommerceNet and was established as an OASIS
Technical Committee in November 2001.
Q: Where does UBL stand at this point?
A: UBL 1.0 was released as an OASIS Standard on 8 November 2004
following three years of open development and public review.
Q: How can I get the UBL 1.0 package, and what's in it?
A: UBL 1.0 can be downloaded as a single zip archive from
http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0.zip
The UBL 1.0 release package contains
- An explanatory introduction
- XML schemas for eight basic business documents: Order, Order
Response, Order Response Simple, Order Change, Order
Cancellation, Despatch Advice, Receipt Advice, and Invoice
- A description of the generic order-to-invoice procurement
process within which the UBL document types are designed to
operate
- A library of more than 400 reusable XML data elements from
which the UBL document schemas are constructed, complete
with definitions based on the ISO 15000 Core Components
Technical Specification
- A description of the UBL 1.0 development methodology
- UML diagrams of the overall UBL data model and its
constituent component packages (Address Package, Contract
Package, Delivery Package, Document Reference Package,
Hazardous Item Package, Item Package, Party Package, Payment
Package, Procurement Package, Tax Package)
- Document assembly diagrams showing the relationship between
each of the UBL document types and its constituent
components
- Excel and OpenOffice spreadsheets showing the data models of
each of the UBL documents and the UBL component library
- UBL Naming and Design Rules specifying the generation of UBL
schemas from the UBL data models
- UML class diagrams documenting each of the UBL schemas and
each of the component packages
- Formatting specifications for each of the UBL document types
- Example Order, Order Response (Simple), Order Change, Order
Cancellation, Despatch Advice, Receipt Advice, and Invoice
instance documents demonstrating the use of UBL for buying
office supplies
- Example Order, Order Response, Despatch Advice, and Invoice
instance documents demonstrating the use of UBL for buying
building supplies
- Example printouts of all the instance documents
- Guidelines for customizing the UBL schemas
- A specification for the publication of code list schemas
- A UBL 1.0 ASN.1 specification for UBL documents in binary
form
A publicly subscribable OASIS ubl-dev list provides a public
forum for questions and comments regarding UBL.
Q: UBL 1.0 is amazingly advanced for a specification that's just
been released. How did that happen?
A: An important and controversial early decision of the UBL TC was
to base its work on an existing set of XML business schemas.
Instead of starting from scratch, the UBL TC accepted the
contribution by CommerceOne and SAP of an already widely
deployed commercial XML business vocabulary, xCBL 3.0.
The decision to begin with xCBL was based on four key
considerations. First, xCBL 3.0 was a mature XML specification
already used in a number of ecommerce marketplaces. Second,
xCBL was based on a component library model, ensuring much
better alignment among document types derived from the library
than had been the case with older message standards in which
the different document types were developed independently.
Third, xCBL had been published under terms that allowed the
free creation of derivative works. And fourth, CommerceOne and
SAP were willing to back up their contribution with technical
resources that supported much of UBL's early development.
UBL has since evolved independently to the point where its
origins in xCBL can no longer be recognized, but the decision
to begin with an already successful specification gave UBL a
three-year head start that it continues to enjoy today. At
this point, UBL represents over six years of continuous
development in the creation of a standard XML business syntax.
Q: Who owns UBL?
A: UBL is owned by OASIS, a nonprofit organization dedicated to
the open development of public XML standards. UBL is maintained
by an OASIS Technical Committee made up of XML and business
experts.
Q: How much will it cost to use UBL?
A: UBL is royalty-free. It can be used without charge by anyone.
Q: UBL claims to be "universal," but its definitions of business
terms are all written in English. How can people who don't
speak English understand UBL documents?
A: Most people will interact with UBL documents using software
that automatically presents the relevant information through a
localized interface, so the important question here is how UBL
can be made usable for software designers and business
analysts. To meet their needs, UBL Localization Subcommittees
have translated the UBL definitions and business terms into
Chinese (Simplified), Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. Drafts of
the translations are currently undergoing public review and are
expected to be made available for general use at the start of
2005. The four translations already completed in draft form
will make UBL understandable by over two-thirds of the world's
current online population. Representatives of regional
electronic commerce organizations and national ministries of
trade are expected to form similar UBL localization
subcommittees for other major language communities.
Q: In what ways does UBL support an incremental transition from
paper-based trade to electronic trade?
A: UBL is a strongly document-centric approach to electronic
commerce that focuses on standardizing business data in a way
that maps easily to traditional paper forms. The primary
international standard for the paper forms of traditional
documents is the UN Layout Key, which for more than 40 years
has served as the model for paper documents used in
international trade. A mapping of all the UBL documents to
their equivalent UN Layout Keys is provided as part of the UBL
1.0 release. Free XSL-FO stylesheets are available from Crane
Softwrights (http://cranesoftwrights.com/) to convert UBL
documents to their Layout Key equivalents in HTML and PDF form
using commercially available XSL-FO formatters, and free Java
software based on the Crane library is available from Ambrosoft
(http://ambrosoft.com/) to directly transform any UBL document
into HTML files conformant to the UN Layout Key. Thus, UBL is a
standard, machine-processable business data format from which
at any moment you can automatically generate an internationally
standardized paper representation.
Q: How does UBL address the legal aspects of paperless trade?
A: A key objective of UBL from the beginning has been to provide
the world with standards for the electronic versions of
traditional business documents designed in a way that
recognizes established commercial and legal
practices. Implementing international paperless trade will
require extensive cooperation among nations to institute
uniform legal codes governing the substitution of electronic
documents for their paper equivalents. UBL's contribution to
this effort lies in the definition of a standard set of XML
forms and close cooperation with the organizations working
toward the establishment of an international ecommerce
infrastructure.
Since December 2001, UBL has been on the standing agenda of the
ISO IEC ITU UN/ECE eBusiness MoU Management Group, of which
OASIS is a nonvoting member. This group manages relationships
regarding electronic business standards among the organizations
referenced by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT). OASIS is also a Class A Liaison to ISO TC 154, which is
responsible for the international standardization of electronic
document syntaxes such as EDIFACT. It is the intention of the
UBL TC to request the submission of UBL to ISO subsequent to
its approval as an OASIS Standard.
Q: What is the relationship of UBL to ebXML?
A: The impetus to begin the UBL TC came from the desire of a
number of ebXML participants to define a standard XML payload
format for ebXML -- that is, an XML counterpart to traditional
EDI standards such as X12 and EDIFACT. As described further at
ebxml.org, the ebXML suite of specifications, many of them now
standardized as ISO 15000, provides a complete, next-generation
XML-based infrastructure that enables EDI functionality over
the free Internet. UBL provides a standard data format for the
messages to be exchanged in such an infrastructure. However,
UBL is designed to be "agnostic" with respect to the
infrastructure, and UBL messages can be used in a very wide
range of functional contexts, from complex service-oriented
architectures (SOAs) to the simple exchange of documents via
email.
Q: What is the relationship of UBL to ebXML Core Components?
A: UBL is the first true standards body implementation of the
ebXML Core Components Technical Specification (CCTS 2.01, aka
ISO 15000-5). The UBL library consists of ebXML CCTS Business
Information Entities (BIEs). UBL XML schemas are defined
through the application of UBL Naming and Design Rules (NDRs)
to an underlying data model mapped to the Core Component types.
UBL is currently working in conjunction with UN/CEFACT TBG17 to
map UBL to the eventual standard Core Component library and
with UN/CEFACT ATG and OAGI to develop a single International
Standard for XML representation of ebXML Core Component Types
and Unqualified Datatypes.
Q: What is the relationship of UBL to UN/CEFACT?
A: UN/CEFACT is the international agency responsible for trade
facilitation and EDI standards. Together, UN/CEFACT and OASIS
developed ebXML. UBL is designed to support the goals of
UN/CEFACT, which in August 2003 stated that "UN/CEFACT will
support only one document-centric approach to XML content, and
its desire is that UBL will be the foundation for that
approach." OASIS and UN/CEFACT are currently engaged in
negotiations that may result in the transfer of UBL from OASIS
to UN/CEFACT. If this occurs, UBL will become the standard
document-centric XML syntax for UN/CEFACT, putting it at the
XML delivery end of the extensive UN/CEFACT definition process
for business data standards.
Q: What differentiates UBL from apparently similar efforts such as
RosettaNet and OAGIS?
A: There are some similarities between UBL and other XML business
data initiatives, but taken together, UBL's attributes make it
unique.
- UBL does not attempt in its first release to reproduce the
functionality of existing EDI message sets or even of the
xCBL specification with which it began. Instead of the
40-50 document types in these older standards, UBL in its
first release focuses on simple procurement and contains
just eight basic document types (in addition to the
component library upon which they are based). It is
explicitly an 80/20 solution that emphasizes a fit with
small-business practices and inexpensive generic software.
- UBL was developed in a completely open, publicly visible,
vendor-neutral, royalty-free standards process that allows
input from the entire user community -- not just big
corporate players who can afford to pay hefty consortium fees.
You don't have to sign a non-disclosure agreement to work
with or talk about UBL!
- Many of the currently available XML business vocabularies
are optimized to support the business requirements of
specific vertical industries. UBL is designed to work
across domains, making it ideally suited to the needs of
users such as governments that must impose a standard format
upon trading partners in multiple industries.
- UBL is the first standard to be based on the ebXML Core
Components Technical Specification (ISO 15000-5). The
alternative offerings have barely begun this process.
- UBL is also completely up-to-date with regard to schema
technology and library design. The UBL schema Naming and
Design Rules, developed by a world-class group of XML schema
experts, are being widely adopted and copied by other XML
definition efforts. And the component library approach to
document definition puts UBL miles ahead of older efforts in
which the various document types were defined in isolation.
- To reduce the job of ecommerce standardization to manageable
proportions, UBL strongly differentiates the data
standardization problem from the process standardization
problem. UBL focuses on the standardization of business data
as the first step toward global ecommerce integration,
leaving the standardization of business processes to user
communities and assuming that process definition will be
addressed in a separate layer of the stack. A side benefit
of this approach is to make UBL usable with the widest
possible range of process definition technologies.
- To provide a bridge between traditional paper-based
workflows and electronic commerce, UBL is strongly
document-centric, preserving transparency for human users
and easily mapping to processes based on the exchange of
legally binding instruments. To put it another way, UBL is
focused on the "public space" between enterprises rather
than the "private space" within enterprises, and it is
therefore better tuned for open-ended B2B exchanges than
are schema libraries designed for internal application
integration.
To sum up, UBL does not seek to compete with any existing XML
business vocabularies but rather to meet a set of needs that
are not being adequately met by any of them.
Q: How does UBL cope with the need for customization to meet
different business requirements?
A: In many small-business environments, standard forms can satisfy
business requirements well enough to be used without
modification. The existence of standard paper forms such as the
UN Layout Key proves this. In these environments, UBL can work
right out of the box.
It is true, however, that different industries have different
data requirements, and this has led in the past to the
proliferation of variants even in such tightly controlled
standards as X12, EDIFACT, and RosettaNet.
UBL has both short-term and long-term strategies for dealing
with the need to create variations of basic data structures
tuned for different business contexts.
The short-term (UBL 1.0) strategy is to provide guidelines for
the manual extension of the generic UBL data models. A document
detailing the methods that can be used to develop
UBL-compatible custom schemas is included in the UBL 1.0
release package. It is expected that industry data exchange
standards organizations will use these guidelines to create
their own versions of the UBL documents according to their
expert understanding of the needs of each industry. The
contribution of UBL at this stage will be to radically reduce
the cost of document creation and to maximize code reuse to the
fullest extent practical.
The long-term (post-1.0) strategy is to create a technology for
the automatic creation of specific document types based on the
particular business context in which they are to be used. UBL
intends to build on the ebXML identification of key context
drivers (business process, industry, regulatory environment,
etc.) in developing this context methodology.
Q: What's next for UBL?
A: UBL 1.1, scheduled for release at the end of 2005, will include
- Resolution of a number of issues raised during the
development of UBL 1.0 that were judged safely deferrable to
1.1
- Refinements and clarifications of the UBL data definitions
arising from the translation work
- Additions to the UBL library identified by the UBL
localization subcommittees as required to accommodate
regional business practices
- Consideration of proposed additions to the UBL document set
submitted by qualified organizations (Example: Certificate
of Origin)
Q: Is the UBL effort still open to participation?
A: Yes, and the transition to UBL 1.1 provides a perfect
opportunity to become involved. Anyone interested in
participating in the further development of UBL should join
OASIS and sign up for the UBL TC. OASIS memberships are
available at the following URL:
http://www.oasis-open.org/join/
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