Re: [ubl-dev] UBL vs UN/CEFACT

[Stephen Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com>]

I guess I was around early enough in UBL TC to remember
the history of the emergence of the CEFACT messages.
I guess some reasons your customers might want to wait for
CEFACT messages are

1. if they or their important trading partners already have a

significant investment in EDI (especially EDIFACT) which they
wish to preserve - maybe (???) the CEFACT messages will
provide a better option than UBL for consistency with what they
have - on an ongoing basis

2. if they find that UN/CEFACT is better for them than OASIS
(the contrary might be true for some) as a provider of standard
sanction

3. if they do not worry about traction - they do not need something

already adopted

4. if they hope that CEFACT might produce lots of messages in
lots of domains all consistent with eachother and are prepared to
wait for that to maybe happen (no guarantees it will, or that it will

be any time soon)

5. if they prefer schemas which use local design - perhaps they
need some of the local design features (but I think they might
find the global design UBL uses better for subsetting needs)

6. if they are OK with early adoption of very big message
structures or can afford the expense of being among the first
to do subsetting (in contrast UBL subsets like NES already exist
after lots of time and financial investment by the brave guys who

developed it and its precursors)

7. if they want more than UBL can offer in some other way and 
wish to hope that CEFACT will provide what is perhaps lacking

8. if they have been promised by a vendor that they will support

CEFACT but not necessarily that they currently support of will
in the same timeframe support UBL)

9. if they look mainly at UNECE as a standards body and prefer
to go for something produced under its umbrella but consider its

recommendation of UBL as an interim measure (I guess that seems
to have been the spirit of it) so prefer to wait in case the CEFACT
library of messages materialises in a useful form and timescale


If on the other hand they prefer something in use today then

maybe NES subset of UBL is most appropriate for immediate adoption
- although even then I'd personally prefer to wait for the UBL 2.1
release because it promises to fix problems which concern me
but then they'd have to wait for subsets like NES to be applied

to UBL 2.1 (or do it themselves - which I would be inclined to do
if it were me). Or look elsewhere altogether - perhaps cXML if they
want something widely used and fairly useful out of the box - but
I cannot recommend something like that which I've never tried using

myself. But then I've not tried CEFACT messages myself of even
UBL in production systems - only a little bit of adoption of BASDA's
standards (which I helped develop). I develop the stuff; I rarely get
the chance to use it too. So my reasons for adoption are coloured

by that fact.

None of that answers why CEFACT is producing messages like
UBL's - best ask them.

---
Stephen D Green

2009/7/22 Danny Gaethofs <dgaethofs@yahoo.com>

Thanks Stephen,

I am not against UN/CEFACT . For the last four years I have been telling my company's customers that there was a new emerging standard called UN/CEFACT gaining more and more adoption .

However the past year I am telling everyone UN/CEFACT is coming BUT that they experience this as the wrong answer because they want to know if I start today what standard should I use.

The Dutch Ministery choose to push UBL and adopted HR-XML for the staffing services. Which European country is next ?

kind regards
Danny Gaethofs

---

From: Stephen Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com>
To: JAVEST by Roberto Cisternino <roberto@javest.com>
Cc: Danny Gaethofs <dgaethofs@yahoo.com>; Robert Lemense <r.lemense@skynet.be>; andreas.schultz@dkv.com; ubl-dev@lists.oasis-open.org
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 3:19:36 PM

Subject: Re: [ubl-dev] UBL vs UN/CEFACT

Could I guess on another reason why CEFACT produces messages
which duplicate the UBL efforts (and what might have been UBL potential
future messages): Maybe the aim is to ensure EDIFACT and CEFACT
messages can keep on aligning. The BIEs don't have to be represented
in XML alone - the same BIEs could be represented in EDIFACT too.
UBL makes no difference, it seems to my sideline viewpoint, except that
it doesn't correlate its efforts with EDIFACT except that it submits to
TBG17 for harmonisation. Maybe this is irrelevant to many and maybe
the many have to accept slow pace while getting little in return while the
EDI users get more benefit perhaps if the messages are produced in/by
CEFACT. Just a stab in the dark guess.
---
Stephen D Green

2009/7/22 Stephen Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com>

Not sure about that Roberto. I read an XBRL book a few years ago which
argued that ebXML might compete with XBRL and efforts like UBL had a
chance of successfully doing this. Back then there was no intention of
CEFACT producing its own XML messages - nothing definite anyway -
so the only likely candidate for competing with XBRL from the ebXML
technology 'side' was UBL (probably not GS1-XML or OAGIS, in other words).
The name of UBL as Universal Business Language and its design as a
fully extensible library of BIEs meant it could be as broad in its coverage
of business domains as the demand required. The domains side of it with
its early adoption of the context methodology (even to the extent that we
have context columns in the spreadsheets to allow as many contexts
as required beyond Procurement, Transport, etc) meant it could grow and
grow. We never knew (still don't, I guess) whether UN/CEFACT messages
would fill any of the gaps like eGovernment, Accounting, etc. The NDR
allows domains not even considered by UBL to adopt the same methods
in producing documents. Seminal in all of this was an early paper and
government recommendation for XML messages by Hong Kong Uni
(by guys on this list I expect) to say how UBL methodology combined with
a harmonisation system could cater for producing electronic versions of
every kind of paper form used in the Hong Kong public sector and this got
taken up as an influencer of the UBL approach. Back then eGov TC had
thoughts that all sorts of things could be done using the UBL approach,
not just procurement. I think it might have been the CEFACT message
design projects which curtailed these ideas as TBGs were set up for all
sorts of things. But they don't cover even as many areas as OASIS covers
and seem to have been slowing down. OASIS was forum for areas like
emergency response messages, elections, tax, CRM contact details, etc
which don't seem to have been replicated in CEFACT. So UBL was a
little bit unique in the extent to which its efforts have been duplicated and
that has been mainly in two related domains - procurement / transport.
So I think it is a little bit of an exaggeration to say that CEFACT has
been the preferred forum because it can encompass more domains.
That isn't even true to date if you compare CEFACT's TBGs with OASIS
coverage in general of business and government domains. The answer is
more political than that. CEFACT is preferred by governments which are
very pro-UN and maybe a little ambivilent about OASIS - perhaps also by
those more pro-EDI and XML-phobic. That's my guess anyway. The
politics rather than technical reasons behind that are hidden from me.
I guess it might be a matter of preserving one's existing investments but
not necessarily future-looking in a technological sense. I'm not all that
convinced that CEFACT is the only forum, even looking forward, which
can cover many domains. Depends where people want to direct their
resources, in my opinion (not necessarily those of my employers!).
---
Stephen D Green

2009/7/22 JAVEST by Roberto Cisternino <roberto@javest.com>

Hello,

I think I already answered this question.

UBL is covering just the commercial part of the electronic business.  Of course supported documents are the most common in the world but not the only one.    eFinance messages for instance are not in the scope of UBL.

UN/EDIFact was embracing almost *ALL* documents/messages used all over the world.

This is why CEFACT has been always considered the preferred place to drive an ISO standardization of an eBusiness Global Standard.

Best regards

Roberto

---
Danny Gaethofs ha scritto:

Dear Robert and Andreas,

Although UN/EDIFACT - and also ANSI X12 if we are just going to look into what WAS available - is one of the oldest EDI standards we have seen with the advent of XML a boost of new XML standards (semantics and syntaxes) coming up such as the OAGI standard, BASDA, RosettaNet, cXML and moreover 150 other XML standards.

We can turn the phrase around and say UN/CEFACT vs UBL but that is not what ultimately it is about. The question is why after all these 150 XML standards were developed including cXML and UBL have people decided to start the development of UN/CEFACT ?

kind regards
Danny Gaethofs

---

From: Robert Lemense <r.lemense@skynet.be>
To: andreas.schultz@dkv.com; roberto@javest.com; dgaethofs@yahoo.com
Cc: ubl-dev@lists.oasis-open.org
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 12:37:26 PM
Subject: Re: [ubl-dev] UBL vs UN/CEFACT

Well done Andreas,

 

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  (George Santayana - The Life of Reason)

 

Best Regards,

Robert Lemense

Past Chair TBG12 (Accounting & Audit)

UN/CEFACT

----- Original Message -----

From: andreas.schultz@dkv.com

To: roberto@javest.com ; dgaethofs@yahoo.com

Cc: ubl-dev@lists.oasis-open.org

Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 10:20 AM

Subject: AW: [ubl-dev] UBL vs UN/CEFACT

Hello Danny and Roberto,

 

especially, mentioning  UN/EDIFACT the point is, that UN/EDIFACT was there for a long time before UBL came up. As far as I remember, UBL came up, during the time of the ebXML project. So indeed, you could turn the question just the other way round.

 

Best regards

Andreas Schultz

Chair TBG8 (Insurance)

UN/CEFACT Forum

---

Von: JAVEST by Roberto Cisternino [mailto:roberto@javest.com]
Gesendet: Dienstag, 21. Juli 2009 18:52
An: Danny Gaethofs
Cc: ubl-dev@lists.oasis-open.org
Betreff: Re: [ubl-dev] UBL vs UN/CEFACT

Hello Danny,

probably you can find some answers into the MoU for eBusiness where OASIS has been invited:
http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/e-business/mou/

and following the link "Key Standards" under Resources, you will find UBL too:

http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/e-business/mou/MoUMG-standards.html

In few words the MoU on eBusiness is promoting collaboration and re-use of existing standards within partecipants.

UBL was in the agenda of the MoU/Management Group

http://xml.coverpages.org/MoU-MG-OASIS2002.pdf
http://xml.coverpages.org/MOU-OASIS-200202.html
    

Compared to UN/EDIFact, UBL can be considered as the eBusiness kernel, just like ISO20022-UNIFI is the eFinance kernel and WCO is the Customs kernel, so on...

So I understood it was a logic path to create a unique integrated set of business documents & messages for the whole Financial Supply Chain.

UBL was effectively into this path from a long time, expecially due to the MoU.

Today the possibility to endorse OASIS and W3C Standards by European Standardization bodies is providing new instruments to protect the best practices and standardization efforts provided by relevant Open Consortium (aka User Groups).

http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/ict/policy/standards/whitepaper.pdf

Hope this helps,

Best regards,

Roberto Cisternino
---

Danny Gaethofs ha scritto:

Dear all,

I just recently got the question what has been the reason for starting the development of UN/CEFACT whereas UBL was already available. I have been reading a lot about this but apart from the CCTS approach that has been worked out much further within UN/CEFACT I do not really find the answer.

Any one out there that has been there from the start remembers why ?

kind regards
Danny Gaethofs

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