(ANN) Rechartering of the OASIS Business Document Exchange TC

[Chet Ensign <chet.ensign@oasis-open.org>]

OASIS members and interested parties, 

The OASIS Business Document Exchange TC has approved [1] a revised charter, included below. The TC name, statement of purpose, scope, list of deliverables, audience, IPR mode and language specified in the revision will constitute the TC's official charter. The TC will hold its first meeting under its revised charter on 02 May 2012 [2]. Submissions of technology for consideration by the TC, and the beginning of technical discussions, may begin no sooner than this first meeting.

The revised charter for the OASIS Business Document Exchange TC is available here: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/bdxr/charter.php. The TC's web site under the revised charter is here: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/bdxr. The TC's email archive will be available at http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/bdxr/. Its publicly available comment list will be available at http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/bdxr-comment/. 

The archive of the TC's activities under its earlier charter, including its original charter, email archives and document collection, will remain publicly available at http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/bdx. 

OASIS and the TC welcomes particiaption by all interested parties. The eligibility requirements for becoming a participant in the TC at the first meeting are:

(a) you must be an employee of an OASIS member organization or an individual member of OASIS, and

(b) you must join the Technical Committee, which OASIS members may do by following the steps described at the "Join this TC" button on the TC's home page [3].

Note that everyone who wishes to participate must explicitly join the TC as described in (b). Membership under the original charter does not automatically carry over. 

Non-OASIS members who wish to participate may contact us about joining OASIS [4]. 

Please feel free to forward this announcement to any other appropriate lists. OASIS is an open standards organization; we encourage your participation in our work.

--- Additional Information --- 

[1] Special Majority Ballot 
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ballot.php?id=2207

[2] First meeting under revised charter 
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/event.php?event_id=33093

[3] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/bdxr/

[4] See http://www.oasis-open.org/join/

--- Revised Charter ---

(1) Charter of the TC 

(1)(a) Name of the TC:
OASIS Business Document Exchange TC

(1)(b) Statement of Purpose:
The BDX standard will describe an architecture (or sets of reference architectures) where two entities exchange business documents in a secure and reliable way through the use of gateways (sometimes also referred to as access points), which is also known as the "four-corner model".

The purpose of the TC is therefore to define the specifications of a lightweight and federated messaging and trust infrastructure for reliable data exchange, messaging and web services interoperability between domains. Here, a "domain" can be any community whose members (a) are connected through a shared system, and (b) may interact with others across domains.

Regardless of each domain's internal workings, such interactions entail them each consuming and exposing to others over the Internet certain interfaces. These specifications should provide a framework for domains to interoperate securely and reliably (via Web Services), which can therefore be viewed as an Inter-cloud Web Services framework.

The TC specifications should be lightweight but, wherever and to the extent possible, based on profiles of existing standards from OASIS and elsewhere that are widely-used and proven, or otherwise seen to be generally applicable. Approaches that are modular and agnostic about data content and implementation architectures will be preferred.

The TC will focus first on requirements for exchanges between groups of related domains around standardized processes/data. Requirements of cross-domain business documents exchange, with its corresponding use cases, and implied interoperability requirements will inform prioritization of the TC's initial deliverables. The TC will specifically address requirements submitted by the Large Scale Pilots ("LSPs") in the area of e-government PEPPOL and e-CODEX. The work of the TC will contribute to the ongoing convergence of Pan-European messaging and trust infrastructures for reliable data exchange.

In certain areas the work will therefore initially be centered on the work of these LSPs (notably on SMLP around identity and service discovery, addressing and profiling), and will also consider other approaches and related specifications (e.g. DNS, ebXML CPA, UDDI, ebXML RegRep, WS-Discovery), The TC may define or profile more than one such specification(s).

In other areas, published specifications today may be absent or have gaps. In such cases the TC will attempt to identify relevant standards or work-in-progress at OASIS or other SDOs to establish liaisons with and provide requirements for such efforts, as needed.

(1)(c) Scope of work of the TC:
The specific objectives will be to define, specify and maintain the following:

1. Use cases and requirements, based on submissions;

2. Profiling / gap analysis of existing standards with reference to the use cases and requirements, potentially including:
  a) Addressing / Routing / Discovery (SML and related technologies)
  b) Service profiles/Capabilities (SMP, CPA and others)
  c) Identity/Authentication
  d) Trust Frameworks
  e) Transport / Reliable Messaging (e.g. AS4)

3. Unified architecture for all processes necessary and sufficient for the superset of supported use cases;

4. Specifications for SML/SMP will be developed within the TC;

5. PEPPOL specifications for the START and LIME protocols.

(1)(d) List of deliverables:
Technical specifications for protocols supporting distributed discovery of locations and e-business and technical capabilities of exchange partners.

Profiles of B2B messaging protocols for use in four-corner (or multi-corner) topologies.

(1)(e) IPR Mode under which the TC will operate:
The TC will operate under the Non-Assertion Mode.

(1)(f) The anticipated audience or users of the work:
The initial target groups for the TC are:

- Enterprise procurement vendors and supplier networks
- Software companies (e.g. providers of middleware and business applications)
- Supplier information management providers
- Public institutions
- Financial institutions and payment networks
- Large private companies

(1)(g) Language of the Technical Committee:
The business of the Technical Committee will be conducted in English.

(2) Non-normative information regarding the rechartering of the TC:

(2)(a) Similar or applicable work:
There are OASIS TC's and other standards bodies covering topics related to the BDX TC: ebMS, ebXML CPA, UDDI, ebXML RegRep, WS-Discovery, AMQP and ETSI REM. The BDX TC is not competing with any of these existing standards but will build upon their existing specifications to define a complete infrastructure architecture.

Liaisons: The initial list of liaisons that will be established includes: OASIS ebXML Technical Committees, ETSI ESI and OASIS Identity in the Cloud TC. Other liaisons will be established in the course of the work.

(2)(b) First meeting:
First meeting of the rechartered TC will be held May 2nd 2012 at 16.00 CEST. The meeting will be held online. Access to the meeting is provided through https://www4.gotomeeting.com/join/925073807. A conference calling
number will be available for any participants who cannot access the meeting online.

(2)(c) Meeting schedule:
The TC will hold weekly conference calls and in addition two face-to-face meetings a year (November and May). Face-to-face meetings will be sponsored by the members of the TC.

(2)(d) Members supporting the rechartering of the TC:

Kenneth Bengtsson, kenneth@alfa1lab.com, individual member 

Mikkel Hippe Brun, mhb@tradeshift.com, Tradeshift Network Ltd.

Andrea Caccia, andrea.caccia@studiocaccia.com, AITI-Associazione Italiana Tesorieri de Impresa

Pim van der Eijk, pvde@sonnenglanz.net, Sonnenglanz Consulting

Tim McGrath, tim.mcgrath@documentengineeringservices.com, Document Engineering Services Limited

Sven Rasmussen, svrr@itst.dk, Denmark Ministry of Science, Technology & Innovation / DIGST

Susanne Wigaard, Susanne.Wigard@it.nrw.de, Land Nordrhein-Westfalen

(2)(e) Organizational members' statements of support:

Document Engineering Services Limited:
Tim McGrath, tim.mcgrath@documentengineeringservices.com, "Having been a supporter of the original Business Document Exchange TC's charter, Document Engineering Services fully supports the rechartering of the BDX TC as proposed."

Sonnenglanz Consulting:
Pim van der Eijk, pvde@sonnenglanz.net, ,"Sonnenglanz Consulting supports the proposed rechartering of the BDX TC, as agreed in the BDX TC meeting of March 14th and recorded in the minutes http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/bdx/document.php?document_id=4 5438  <http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/bdx/document.php?document_id= 45438.>."

Land Nordrhein-Westfalen:
Carsten Schmidt, carsten.schmidt@jm.nrw.de, "The Land Nordrhein-Westfalen supports the proposed rechartering of the BDX TC."

AITI-Associazione Italiana Tesorieri de Impresa:
Gianfranco Tabasso, gianfranco.tabasso@fmsgroup.it, "AITI too supports the rechartering."

Denmark Ministry of Science, Technology & Innovation / DIGST:
Jens Jakob Andersen, jjan@itst.dk, "NITA/DIGST also supports the proposed rechartering of the BDX TC, as agreed in the BDX TC meeting of March 14th and recorded in the minutes http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/bdx/document.php?document_id=4 5438 <http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/bdx/document.php?document_id= 45438.>."

Tradeshift Networks Ltd.:
Mikkel Hippe Brun, mhb@tradeshift.com, "Tradeshift supports the proposed rechartering of the BDX TC, as agreed in the BDX TC meeting of March 14th and recorded in the minutes http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/bdx/document.php?document_id=45438 <http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/bdx/document.php?document_id= 45438.>."

(2)(f) Name of the Convener:

The Convener is Kenneth Bengtsson, kenneth@alfa1lab.com

/chet 
----------------
Chet Ensign
Director of Standards Development and TC Administration 
OASIS: Advancing open standards for the information society
http://www.oasis-open.org

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