[ubl-lsc] Draft NACS/UBL press release

[Jon Bosak <Jon.Bosak@sun.com>]

LSC members,

This is the first draft of a press release to announce the
addition of NACS to the UBL liaisons.  It's modeled closely on the
press release that went out when ACORD joined.  Action items are
as follows:

John Hervey: Please check out the sample quote from NACS (third
paragraph) and let me know the name of the appropriate person to
attribute this to and whether anything needs changing.

All other voting members: Please take a second to review the blurb
below describing your organization and let me know whether
anything needs to be added or changed.

Jon

==================================================================

DRAFT:  NACS Brings Convenience Stores to UBL Liaisons

Boston, MA, USA; ** July 2002 -- NACS, an international trade
association for convenience stores and their suppliers, has become
the latest industry group to appoint a representative to the OASIS
Universal Business Language (UBL) Technical Committee. NACS joins
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.

NACS (http://cstorecentral.com/) is an international trade
association representing 2,300 retail and 1,700 supplier company
members. NACS member companies do business in nearly 40 countries
around the world, with the majority of members based in the United
States.  The U.S. convenience store industry, with over 124,500
stores across the country, posted $283 billion in total sales for
2001, with $171 billion in motor fuel sales.

[QUOTE FROM NACS GOES HERE; THE FOLLOWING IS JUST A SAMPLE]
"Convenience stores must deal with a wide range of suppliers.
They are not only points of sale for many perishable and packaged
goods but are also major retail outlets for gasoline and other
petroleum products," said *************** of NACS.  "We're looking
to UBL to provide a uniform set of standards for transactions
across the whole range of convenience store suppliers."

Other organizations with 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; 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.

"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 UBL 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 ACORD (www.acord.org)

ACORD (Association for Cooperative Operations Research and
Development) is a global, nonprofit insurance association whose
mission is to facilitate the development and use of standards for
the insurance, reinsurance, and related financial services
industries. With offices in Belgium, the United Kingdom, and the
United States, ACORD accomplishes its mission by remaining an
objective, independent advocate for sharing information among
diverse platforms.  Affiliated with ACORD are hundreds of
insurance and reinsurance companies and thousands of agents and
brokers, related financial services organizations, software
providers, and industry organizations worldwide.

About ARTS (www.nrf-arts.org)

The Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS), a division
of the National Retail Federation (NRF), is dedicated to the
creation of an international, barrier-free technology environment
for retailers. The National Retail Federation (NRF) is the world's
largest retail trade association, with membership that comprises
all retail formats and channels of distribution, including
department, specialty, discount, catalog, Internet, and
independent stores. NRF members represent an industry that
encompasses more than 1.4 million U.S. retail establishments with
aggregate annual sales of more than $3.4 trillion. NRF's
international members operate stores in more than 50 nations. In
its role as the retail industry's umbrella group, NRF also
represents 32 national and 50 state associations in the U.S. as
well as 36 international associations representing retailers
abroad.

About ASC X12 (www.x12.org)

The Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12, accredited by the
American National Standards Institute and comprised of
cross-industry representation, develops robust e-business exchange
specifications and electronic data interchange standards that
interact with a multitude of e-commerce technologies. Through
standards setting and active participation in emerging and
technically relevant initiatives, ASC X12 facilitates the
effective exchange of electronic information. Propelling global
e-business, ASC X12 serves as the entry point for the United
States into the United Nations/Electronic Data Interchange for
Administration, Commerce and Transport (UN/EDIFACT), an
international standard relating to the exchange of trade goods and
services.

About the UN/EDIFACT Working Group (***************** URL here)

The UN/EDIFACT Working Group is responsible for the development
and maintenance of UN/EDIFACT, the international standard for EDI.
Its work takes place within UN/CEFACT (www.uncefact.org), the
United Nations body whose mandate covers worldwide policy and
technical development in the area of trade facilitation and
electronic business.


About EIDX (www.eidx.org)

The Electronics Industry Data Exchange Association (EIDX) is a
section of the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA)
that represents the majority of companies in the electronics
industry. EIDX researches and develops information exchange
methodologies for the electronics industry and develops and
publishes business models and standards implementation guidelines
that represent current and emerging practices.

About RosettaNet (www.rosettanet.org)

RosettaNet is an independent, self-funded, non-profit consortium
dedicated to the development and deployment of standard electronic
business interfaces to align the processes between supply chain
partners on a global basis. More than 250 companies representing
more than $1 trillion in annual information technology and
electronic components revenues, currently participate in
RosettaNet's standards development, strategy, and implementation
activities.

About XBRL (www.xbrl.org)

XBRL is an international consortium comprising accounting
standards bodies, accounting firms, technology companies,
financial information providers, corporations, and government
regulatory bodies. The XBRL standard is freely licensed and
permits the automatic exchange and reliable extraction of
financial information across all software formats and
technologies, including the Internet.  XBRL does not require a
company to disclose any additional information beyond that which
they normally disclose under existing accounting standards, nor
does it require a change to existing accounting standards.

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 400 corporate and individual members in 100
countries around the world. OASIS and the United Nations jointly
sponsor ebXML, a global framework for e-business data
exchange. OASIS operates XML.org, a community clearinghouse for
XML application schemas, vocabularies and related documents. OASIS
hosts The XML Cover Pages, an online reference collection for
interoperable markup language standards.