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

["Crawford, Mark" <mark.crawford@sap.com>]

This is in interesting thread of revisionist history by a lot of folks who were not involved and are relying on anecdotal evidence :-). 

 

UN/CEFACT in 1999 started ebXML in part to determine how to move EDIFACT forward into XML.  UBL did not come along until two years later, and only as an outgrowth of the lack of any actual content work being conducted in ebXML.  Initial discussions in having UBL in the EWG were not successful as much for political reasons on both sides as anything else and that is why it was started in OASIS.  The majority of the content in UBL was developed by UN/CEFACT personnel who fully expected UBL to be subsumed by UN/CEFACT at some point as promised in the initial UBL meetings and its formal documentation. The technical solutions were contributed to, and at times led by, UN/CEFACT personnel. 

 

In UBL's defense, the divergence by UBL from CCTS is as much a function of timing in the delivery of the specifications as anything else - although both UBL and UN/CEFACT would have been better served if UBL had developed Core Components rather than just BIEs as that part of the spec was fairly mature at the time UBL started. 

 

UN/CEFACT took a more conservative approach than UBL and finished the first version of the specifications before publishing the CCL and the subsequent standard schema.  UN/CEFACT continues to publish CCTS and NDR conformant XML schema independent of UBL and will do so for the forseeable future - while simultaneously working with UBL to finalize the transfer for responsibility of all future development work into UN/CEFACT. UBL has publicly stated it supports such a transfer and is only currently engaged in maintenance on UBL 2.

 

Any comparison of UN/CEFACT and OASIS is like comparing apples and oranges - given their structure, policies, and stated objectives. UN/CEFACT is a recognized de jure international cross-industry business standards organization and certainly carries much weight with solution providors and others.  OASIS is a consortium of individual not necessarily harmonized standards initiatives - with a primary focus on technical vice business standards many of whom operate in an incubator role.  The technical standards carry much weight with solution providors and others, whereas the business standards generally do not.  Each organization has their own purpose and their own pluses and minuses.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Kind Regards,

Mark

UN/CEFACT Applied Technology Group Chair

UN/CEFACT Core Components Working Group Chair

UN/CEFACT CCTS Editor

UN/CEFACT NDR Project Lead

UN/CEFACT XML4CCTS Editor

UN/CEFACT Context Methodology Editor

Past UN/CEFACT XML Syntax Group Chair

Past UBL Vice Chair

Past UBL NDR Chair

Past UBL NDR Editor

Past X12 XML WG Chair

Past Joint X12/EDIFACT Core Components Working Group Chair

ebXML participant in Requirements, Core Components, and Architecture groups

 

---

From: Danny Gaethofs [mailto:dgaethofs@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 9:34 AM
To: stephengreenubl@gmail.com; JAVEST by Roberto Cisternino
Cc: Robert Lemense; andreas.schultz@dkv.com; ubl-dev@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [LIKELY JUNK]Re: [ubl-dev] UBL vs UN/CEFACT

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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