[announce] HL7, SWIFT, VCA, and e.centre Join OASIS UBL Liaisons

[Carol Geyer <carol.geyer@oasis-open.org>]

HL7, SWIFT, VCA, and e.centre Join OASIS UBL Liaisons

Boston, MA, USA; 29 August 2002 -- Data standards organizations
representing health care, banking, prescription eyewear, and
supply chain management have become the latest industry groups to
appoint representatives to the OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL)
Technical Committee. HL7, SWIFT, VCA, and e.centre join liaisons from a
broad group of industry standards organizations in the subcommittee that
provides guidance to UBL, the initiative to define standard XML business
forms for electronic commerce.

"HL7 is not looking to UBL to replace our already existing XML schemas
for medical records," said Wes Rishel, chair of HL7.  "But health care
companies such as hospitals and clinics are major consumers of supplies
from a wide variety of vendors.  Using the UBL supply chain documents
for these ordinary procurement transactions makes practical sense -- we
can concentrate on the data standards that require our knowledge of
health care without reinventing basic business schemas for supply chain
management."

"One of the great challenges SWIFT is actively involved in, as a
standardisation body, is the convergence of the different XML
standardisation initiatives within the finance industry, and the further
alignment across industries," said Jean-Marie Eloy, Head of Standards
for SWIFT.  "We see UBL as a great opportunity to assist us in ensuring
that this convergence will actually happen."

"Prescription eyewear is produced and distributed by a highly
specialized web of businesses" said Bill Thomas, CEO of VCA. "Each pair
of eyeglasses must be custom made to exacting standards to meet the wide
range of prescriptions and the many product options. Prescription
eyewear is a regulated medical device and is often covered by health
insurance plans. All of this results in a vast quantity of very detailed
and often vision-specific business transactions. We believe that UBL can
help us improve the industry's efficiency in handling these
transactions."

"e.centre, on behalf of EAN.UCC, welcomes the opportunity to work with
UBL and hopes that this effort will further the cause of convergent XML
data transfer standards based upon the principles of ebXML," said James
Whittle, Consulting Services Executive for e.centre.  "As EAN.UCC move
to implement ebXML based solutions, it is vital, on behalf of our one
million users worldwide, that we promote a spirit of co-operation and
openness to facilitate effective and efficient standards development."

Organizations that have already appointed liaisons to UBL include:
ACORD, representing the insurance industry; ARTS, representing retail
sales; ASC X12 and the UN/EDIFACT Working Group, representing U.S. and
international EDI standards; EIDX, representing the electronics
industry; NACS, representing convenience stores; RosettaNet, the
information technology
consortium; and XBRL, the accounting industry standards organization.
UBL liaisons provide input to UBL and coordinate
the review of standard XML business schemas as they become publicly
available. Information about the UBL Liaison
Subcommittee and its members can be found on the LSC web page at
http://oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/lsc/.

"Input from industry data exchange organizations ensures that UBL
reflects the needs of the marketplace," said Jon Bosak of Sun
Microsystems, chair of the OASIS UBL Technical Committee and organizer
of the working group that created XML. "Our goal of defining a common
XML library for basic business documents like purchase orders, invoices,
and shipping notices crosses all industries. Contributing to the
development of our library of UBL schemas allows industry groups to pool
their resources in the design of common business documents and to focus
their special expertise on the development of XML schemas for the
documents that are specific to their own domain."

About UBL (http://oasis-open.org/committees/ubl)

The OASIS UBL (Universal Business Language) Technical Committee is an
open, publicly accountable, nonprofit initiative to define a common XML
library for basic business documents like purchase orders, invoices, and
shipping notices.  UBL provides a standard set of XML building blocks
together with a framework that will enable trading partners to
unambiguously identify and exchange basic e-commerce documents in
specific business contexts.

The OASIS UBL effort builds on the Electronic Business XML (ebXML)
infrastructure developed by OASIS and the United Nations.  The ebXML
specifications provide for XML registry services, reliable XML
messaging, standardized trading partner agreements, a standard data
dictionary, and a business context methodology.  However, UBL documents
are usable in a wide variety of other ecommerce frameworks as well.

UBL unites and harmonizes a number of currently existing XML and EDI
business libraries into a set of internationally recognized de jure
standards. Designed to solve major interoperability problems for both
vendors and users, UBL will speed the entry of small and medium-size
businesses into the electronic marketplace. UBL is freely available to
everyone without legal encumbrance or licensing fees.

About HL7 (www.HL7.org)

Founded in 1987, Health Level Seven, Inc. is a not-for-profit,
ANSI-accredited Standards Development Organization (SDO) dedicated to
providing a comprehensive framework and related standards for the
exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic health
information that supports clinical practice and the management, delivery
and evaluation of health services. In addition to its widely used
messaging standards, HL7 published, in 2000, the first XML-based health
care standard, the Clinical Document Architecture (CDA), a framework for
clinical document exchange.  Other HL7 publications include the Clinical
Context Management Specification (CCOW), a standard enabling visual
integration at the front-end, and The Arden Syntax, an ANSI-approved
standard for representing and sharing medical knowledge for clinical
decision support.  HL7 has established international affiliates in 20
countries around the globe, and its 2,200 members represent over 500
corporations, including 90 percent of the largest information systems
vendors serving health care.

About SWIFT (http://www.swift.com/)

SWIFT is the industry-owned cooperative supplying secure messaging
services and interface software to 7,000 financial institutions in 197
countries.  SWIFT carried over 1.5 billion messages in 2001.  The
average daily value of payment messages on SWIFT is estimated to be
above USD 6 trillion.  SWIFT provides messaging services to banks,
broker/dealers and
investment managers, as well as to market infrastructures in payments,
treasury, securities and trade.  These services help customers reduce
costs, improve automation and manage risk. SWIFT is also leading
convergence initiatives in the finance industry, collaborating with over
30 different organisations involved in financial standards.

About VCA (http://www.visionsite.org)

Vision Council of America is the U.S. prescription eyewear trade
association representing 2,000 supplier companies and 80 leading
manufacturers. VCA member companies do business in more than 40
countries around the world.  The U.S. eyewear industry, with over 30,000
stores across the country, posted sales of $15 billion for 2001.

About e.centre (http://www.e-centre.org.uk)

e.centre is an independent, not-for-profit association providing
guidance and support for its 16,000+ members on supply chain
efficiency through the use of the EAN.UCC System for bar coding and
business-to-business communications such as EDI (electronic data
interchange).  e.centre is the UK authority for the EAN.UCC System,
which is used in 129 countries worldwide and forms the basis of
interoperable solutions such as asset tracking, traceability and
collaborative planning.

About OASIS (http://www.oasis-open.org)

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information
Standards) is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the
development, convergence and adoption of e-business standards. Members
themselves set the OASIS technical agenda,
using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry
consensus and unite disparate efforts. OASIS produces worldwide
standards for security, Web services, XML conformance, business
transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and interoperability
within and between marketplaces. OASIS has more than 500 corporate and
individual members in 100 countries around the world.

For more information:
Carol Geyer
Director of Communications
OASIS (www.oasis-open.org)
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
+1.978.667.5115 x209